Are Brains Supposed To Squish Like That?
Ahem.
(Image of the evil ScanTron courtesy of some forum and Google Search. ;)
So, the GRE sucked, pretty much exactly as I’d expected….I hate tests. For any information or theory or skill that I’m supposed to have learned, I will do half as well on a multiple-choice test about it than I will on an oral exam, and 1/4 as well as I’d do writing a paper on it. I was nearly despairing Saturday though; after two solid weeks of studying for the math part I still ended up flat-out guessing on most of the questions…I’m not terrible at things like algebra, but not great + horrible with tests = massive fail, for the most part. And of course my verbal score was good, but only high-end average, because, well, it’s a $@!ing test. My math score was inexplicably not a total fail, not what I’d hoped for but still…the experience of doing all that studying and then not even knowing how to begin answering most of the questions really had me in the dumps. Every once in a while I try really hard to make up for the crappy math education I had in high school, and my natural non-affinity for raw symbol-manipulation, and it’s really, really depressing when all that effort basically does nothing. I’m not a believer in the dismal dogma that says that some people just can’t learn some things…but some days it really does feel like math, algebra especially, is just hopeless for me.
Of course, I did well on the essays - one 45 min. argumentative, one 30 min. analytic, and I know I knocked them both out of the water. I think I could argue pretty well that the ability to organize one’s thoughts and write them coherently is at least as important to graduate work than the memorization of rote facts and the ability to give the answer expected of you**, but guess how much those essays, which comprised almost half the test in terms of time, count for on your score?
Yup, NOTHING. Not at all. They’re graded later and the information is considered "supplemental" to your "actual" score. Which really makes me wonder why the philosophy - you know, almost 100% writing-oriented - graduate program even requires the dumb test? Meh. Probably they’re just expected to. Dammit though, their "expectation" cost me over a hundred bucks and ruined a Saturday!
Anyway, I didn’t do so badly that it hurts my chances to get in, probably, so I’m going to just try to forget about it, be grateful that I don’t have to study any more math (well, except for what I was studying so I could better understand that awesome MIT physics course I found), and move on to worrying about all the other stuff I have to prepare for grad school in, you know, about a month.
**This is the crux of why I don’t do well on tests, in case you were wondering. Most tests, especially multiple-choice-oriented ones, are much more about your ability to pick the answer most people would pick, not your ability to distinguish a "right" from a "wrong" answer. I just can’t turn off the parts of my brain that, ironically, make me good at philosophy; and those parts can often find justification for most or all of the answers offered…often the specific thing they’re looking for depends on context which is assumed but not given, or on other assumptions I either don’t make or don’t want to count on since they’re not explicitly given. So out of A, B, C, & D, both you and I may know the relevant fact that points to D as the answer, but while you may just pick D, I’m going to struggle over the possible situations in which C and B could both be true, or the sense in which A is more correct if you’re referring to a certain macro- or microcosm of the problem….and often the answer I end up deciding is "best" is not at all the one I was "supposed" to pick.
P.S. - I’m also tagging this post "security theatre" because, even though I didn’t describe it much (for all I know the contract I signed says that if I talk about it I’ll be hunted down and decapitated), there was truly ridiculous security/theatre at the GRE place. I ended up smuggling my lucky rock in in my sock, because lucky rocks might help you cheat you know; but with a semi-competent fake I.D. it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. *sigh*
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.