GRE

What a crazy few weeks this has been! We took a trip down to Newport Beach in sunny California (See pic of where we stayed. It was gorgeous.) and had a fabulous time visiting with Lacey's family. We got back a few days before the 4th of July. Our neighbor had a little party so we hung out over there for a while. But before the weekend had finished, it was time to start studying for the GRE! The GRE, if you don't know, is a standardized test, similar to the SAT, that is required for admission to grad school.

I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I started looking around on the intertubes and found out that some people take studying for this test pretty seriously--like, studying-for-several-weeks-and-memorizing-hundreds-of-vocabulary-words serious. I started to panic, as I had only given myself about a week to prepare.

I calmed myself down long enough to review some Math problems like I hadn't seen in 10 years. Someone at work recommended that I get a book on how to study for the GRE. I think it's kind of ridiculous that they sell books on how to study for this single test, but I guess that's just how it is these days. I got one on an inter-library loan (W. Richland library is crap), but it didn't arrive until the Friday before the test, which was on a Monday.

So from Friday night when I got home from work until Sunday night when I went to bed, virtually every waking moment was spent reading that book, memorizing vocabulary words, and taking practice tests. I managed to memorize about 150 new vocabulary words over the weekend, so if anyone needs to know the definitions for useless words like enervate, penurious, perspicacious or magnanimity, I'm your guy.

So after a week of intense studying I felt fairly well-prepared. I took the test and scored above the minimum goal I had set for myself, but when the computer showed me my scores (they are scored instantly) I made an error adding them in my head and thought I had done a lot worse than I did. Dejected, I called Lacey to tell her the bad news. I told her my scores and what they added up to and how they didn't add up to my goal, but she corrected me and informed me that they *did* add up to significantly more than my goal. Hooray!