The Greatest Relief Ever (finishing the GRE)

I’m DONE! And hopefully won’t event have to take this test again unless all the schools I like suddenly decide to up their average GRE scores in the next four months….

But that probably won’t happen.

Here’s the story of my GRE experience:

5:00PM (the night before) Being an RA and living on a floor with 35 other undergrads who sometimes like to get a little rowdy, I decided to put up some precautionary posters on my floor:

I wanted to write “do not disturb her slumber” (think Cave of Wonders from Aladdin), but I figured my residents already know that I’m weird and that I didn’t need to give them more ammo on that point.

9:00PM After having dinner and finally giving up on studying any more, I decide to watch Good Will Hunting with some of my friends. GREAT CHOICE. I love this movie, and if you haven’t seen it, rent/stream it IMMEDIATELY and thank me later.

11:30PM Relaxed and refreshed by the genius of Matt Damon, Robin Williams, and Ben Affleck, I go to my room and attempt (key word) to, as I previously put it, slumber. This eventually works.

7:00AM My alarm goes off and my stress immediately skyrockets to an unhealthy level. For some reason I start to recite a bastardized version of the Alice in Wonderland poem: “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘to take this f**king test,'” — who knew I waxed poetic in really stressful situations?

7:30AM I somehow have managed to put on clothes and such, and meet my friend Matt for breakfast (he is also taking the test). There is a Denny’s right at the edge of our campus with quick service, and we foolishly decide to go here for our pre-GRE nourishment. Good idea? Not by a long shot. Sidebar: I have a weird cyclic relationship with Denny’s. Every time I go, I feel great until like 5 minutes into the meal…then I feel either like I just ate an entire hooved animal that is now kicking me from inside my stomach, or I suddenly develop some weird sweating disease. Pancakes, eggs, orange juice and a hot chocolate should not do this to a person. But there’s something special about Denny’s. Yet, after I leave (feeling horrible every time), I somehow forget this experience and the next time someone says “let’s go to Denny’s!” I do not say “NO! NO NO NO NO NO DO NOT TAKE ME TO THAT BREAKFAST HELL” – instead I say “Hmm, Denny’s — I haven’t been there in a while! Let’s go!” BAD DECISION, RORA. I think they might have some delayed-release drug in their food that wipes your sense memory after a half hour, so when you smell Denny’s your stomach doesn’t roil in response to its nemesis, but instead welcomes the hash browns that will make it want to die. 

8:15AM Feeling wobbly in the stomach, Matt and I drive to the special test center to which we have been assigned.

8:30AM We enter said test center, which is basically a fortress with no windows and only one exit. I’ve never taken a standardized test with this much security before, and I’m going to be honest, it was comically frightening. I guess I’m too old for these newfangled cheating schemes that high school kids have come up with for the SATs — when I took the SATs it was in a high school gym with 100 other kids and what I’m pretty sure was a combination of physics/history/music teachers who “proctored” by wandering around the rows aimlessly. We had calculators, yes, but the test was on paper…do they still make kids use paper in school? Or is it all Smartboards and tablets now? Sidebar: I’m being sarcastic because I feel old. And because I’m just normally sarcastic. Anyway, because of these cheaters, now the security for these tests is INTENSE. I was actually wanded (as in with a metal detection wand) FOUR times throughout the duration of the test. As if I’m not freaking out enough, they just knew that what I really wanted was a woman poking me with one of those things during the test that decides my life. SO. Here’s the process:

-Test Center Lady (TCL) introduces herself, shows me personally to a bank of lockers (in which I have to put all of my belongings; I wasn’t even allowed to bring my phone into the building). TCL then takes my license, checks the picture and my face several times (I can’t blame her, sometimes the thing changes… I would have explained that I’m a Metamorphagus like Tonks, but I felt like that wouldn’t have gone over well), and finally gives me a clipboard full of forms.

-While TCL repeats the process for Matt, I sit down to fill out the forms. HARDEST PART OF THE TEST: they make you copy a paragraph about academic integrity IN CURSIVE. A PARAGRAPH. IN CURSIVE. Yet another thing I haven’t done since grade school. Why does the goal of this test seem to be to make students wish they were 14 again? Literally NO ONE wishes to be 14 again, unless you’re taking this test. After filling out forms, you then read a very long list of rules and disclosures about the different ways the center monitors you during the test (a little creepy, not gonna lie). Since I couldn’t get the actual list they gave me, I decided to take an Internet jaunt to the Prometric website, and retrieved some screenshots for your viewing pleasure.

(sidebar: I am actually a proponent of honesty in general, especially when taking tests, and do not cheat on tests myself. This is purely for satirical and entertaining reasons. Just so no one thinks I’m awful.)

Let me give you a few highlights: “every proctor is trained to recognize potential test security breaches” and  “test security is crucial to protecting the public from unqualified individuals” are my two favorite lines, plus the nicely designed header complete with security camera adds a nice touch.

I’m sorry, did I suddenly drop into a Die Hard movie? I’m imagining some sort of alarm and flashing light going off while the TCL screams “SECURITY BREACH! SECURITY BREACH!” over the PA system — then a bunch of SWAT guys run in and tackle one of the students to the ground…

And protecting the public from unqualified individuals? Good luck with that. Knowing that I can define “abrogation” and regurgitate the Pythagorean theorum DOES NOT mean that I’m “qualified” (I really am, but for arguments’ sake). This test doesn’t measure if I can pay my taxes, or drive a car, or if I’m knowledgeable about politics and can make an educated vote, or even if I know what color red and blue make. I’m pretty sure unqualified people are going to slip by… but thanks for trying TCL, I know that red and blue make orange 🙂

Again, “first line of defense against security breaches”; proof of the metal detection wands and video recording in case you didn’t believe me; plus “FBI-quality fingerprinting and background investigations” — seriously?

Back to the timeline:

9:00AM TCL escorts me through an antechamber after collecting my clipboard, where another TCL makes me sign my name more times, checks my face again to make sure it hasn’t changed, and wands me. She also makes me turn out all my pockets and lift up my pantlegs. Now, I’m wearing girl jeans. Skinny jeans. If you are a woman, you know that you can’t really turn out pockets and/or hide anything in skinny jeans. BECAUSE THEY’RE REALLY SKINNY. Some jeggings don’t even have pockets… I was not so lucky. So I had to struggle futilely with these realllllly tiny pockets while TCL stood there. She actually said “yeah, girls’ pants kind of do the job for us” — WELL THEN WHY AM I STRUGGLING LIKE AN IDIOT? If I had  known pants/pockets would be a problem I would have worn a freaking dress instead! She also made me turn the hood of my sweatshirt inside out and looked in my kangaroo pouch pocket. Me and TCL were REAL CLOSE by the end of this encounter. She then escorts me to my individual cubicle complete with computer and noise-cancelling headphones. Fancy.

11:30ishAM Finally I get a ten minute break, but if I want to leave my cubicle, I have to go through all of the security procedures again… do I go? Do I stay? Eventually the bathroom won out and I left, but it took almost the whole break to go through the Antechamber of Security again.

1:45PM FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I went home, thought about chucking my GRE study book out the window, remembered that it wasn’t mine and that I had to give it back to a friend, and then took a 2 hour nap.

Here ends the story of the morning that I took the dreaded GRE, and afterward feeling the Greatest Relief Ever. Get it? hehehehe