(no subject)
I was somewhat bored the other day and procrastinating on my thesis so I went to the GRE website and downloaded a bunch of practice materials. I want to take the test before they change the format to get rid of all the things I'm good at (analogies and sentence completion) and add a bunch of stuff I don't have any idea how to do (college-level math). And after taking the verbal portion of one of the practice tests and looking over the math portion, I've decided that I'm screwed.
I have no clue how to do the math. I have vague memories of sitting in class and zoning out as the teachers droned on and on about square roots and geometric equations, but do I remember the rules of square roots or the geometric formulae? HELL NO! Something with radius and pie. mmm. pie. Not to mention that I never learned division in the first place way back in 4th grade. I just never understood where you put the numbers, and although I think I might have figured it out now, it takes me forever. I managed to get through school without knowing long division because they started to give us calculators. Lovely, wonderful calculators. Magic calculators that spew out the correct answer to extremely complex (at least to me) division problems in seconds. Beautiful calculators WHICH THEY DON'T LET YOU USE ON THE GRE!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! ::Runs and hides::
So I've been spending my free time relearning math. LOTS of math. Which I hate. Although it is surprisingly restful to work on some of the simpler problems. And I will thank my parents profusely for not giving up on teaching me my multiplication tables. Which took several years, but I know them! I have these disturbing memories of sitting in our dining room whining about how much I hated multiplication and then running to my room in tears yelling about how I'm too stupid to learn math. Which can't have been fun for my parents. I was such a brat.
The verbal, however, is my friend. In fact, I think I like it better than you. Any of you. I may like it better than chocolate, which is saying something, since this is, after all, a test. And I'm sorry that I like the verbal section better than you, but it may be able to make up for my dismal math score. I took a practice test and got a 790 out of 800. That's two questions wrong, and for both of those my second choice was my correct answer. It was nice. There was one that I was a bit perturbed at, because the analogy went like this:
WORSHIP : SACRIFICE as
a) generation : pyre
b) burial : mortuary
c) weapon : centurion
d) massacre : invasion
e) prediction : augury
though fortunately it had a star by it, which meant that this sort of question will not show up on the newer tests. Which is a good thing, because my thought was that worship and sacrifice and their relationship all depend on the religion in question and what you are sacrificing. Heck, if you want, compare worship to a massacre. It all depends on your point of view. The correct answer, if you're interested, is E.
I have no clue how to do the math. I have vague memories of sitting in class and zoning out as the teachers droned on and on about square roots and geometric equations, but do I remember the rules of square roots or the geometric formulae? HELL NO! Something with radius and pie. mmm. pie. Not to mention that I never learned division in the first place way back in 4th grade. I just never understood where you put the numbers, and although I think I might have figured it out now, it takes me forever. I managed to get through school without knowing long division because they started to give us calculators. Lovely, wonderful calculators. Magic calculators that spew out the correct answer to extremely complex (at least to me) division problems in seconds. Beautiful calculators WHICH THEY DON'T LET YOU USE ON THE GRE!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! ::Runs and hides::
So I've been spending my free time relearning math. LOTS of math. Which I hate. Although it is surprisingly restful to work on some of the simpler problems. And I will thank my parents profusely for not giving up on teaching me my multiplication tables. Which took several years, but I know them! I have these disturbing memories of sitting in our dining room whining about how much I hated multiplication and then running to my room in tears yelling about how I'm too stupid to learn math. Which can't have been fun for my parents. I was such a brat.
The verbal, however, is my friend. In fact, I think I like it better than you. Any of you. I may like it better than chocolate, which is saying something, since this is, after all, a test. And I'm sorry that I like the verbal section better than you, but it may be able to make up for my dismal math score. I took a practice test and got a 790 out of 800. That's two questions wrong, and for both of those my second choice was my correct answer. It was nice. There was one that I was a bit perturbed at, because the analogy went like this:
WORSHIP : SACRIFICE as
a) generation : pyre
b) burial : mortuary
c) weapon : centurion
d) massacre : invasion
e) prediction : augury
though fortunately it had a star by it, which meant that this sort of question will not show up on the newer tests. Which is a good thing, because my thought was that worship and sacrifice and their relationship all depend on the religion in question and what you are sacrificing. Heck, if you want, compare worship to a massacre. It all depends on your point of view. The correct answer, if you're interested, is E.