Hey, look at that

So I took a few months off; you may have noticed.  I was busy, yes, but I also made a deliberate choice to have one less item on the to-do list for a little while. 

But now ... well.  Consider this the first day of the rest of my blog.

I will start with the highly important news that, at long last, I have applied to grad school.  One of the many new additions to my to-do list (knocking my writing to the lowest priority) was studying for the GRE.

It loomed like a monster.  Not having taken a math class--or indeed, having done any math that did not include figuring the sale price of clothing--was bound to result in my first ever failing grade on a standardized test.  And not just any standardized test, mind you, but a standardized test that cost $160.

So I studied.  Then I studied some more.  I studied.  Then I studied some more. 

It began to come back to me: trinomials and the FOIL method, the factoring equations, applying geometry theorems to polygons, or whatever.  P.S. I do not like math.

The day of the test was sunny and warm, exactly the opposite of what is expected in mid-February.  The temperature was in the high 60s, a week after several snow days (oh, Tennessee, never change!).

I used every single second on all parts of the exam, because I was going to pass it, and I was going to continue my lifelong pattern of being an awesome test-taker, or die trying.

I'm still alive, so you know what that means.

750 verbal, 570 quantitative (math).

I don't know what my essay scores are yet, but I'm not really worried about it.  In one essay, I referenced Galileo, Howard Carter, and ... somebody else, maybe a group, I don't remember.  But it was completely random and right out of my world history curriculum, and I remember laughing to myself about how totally unconnected each of my examples was, but look at me, building bridges.  In the second essay, I used skills I teach in my speech classes to tear apart an argument in a brutally satisfying masterpiece of critical reasoning. I feel pretty confident.

Sure, my math score could have been better, but look: I had to relearn, like, six years of mid-to-higher level math in a matter of weeks.  I think I did all right.  Plus, my school only requires a 480, so I'm ahead, really, if you think about it.

I am a little disappointed in my verbal score, though.  I could have gotten an 800 if I'd studied. 
Stupid.
*kicks ground*