The last few months have been quite
stressful for me. In December I started to study for the GRE, which
was not a pleasant experience. For those of you who don't know, the
exam is split into three different sections: math, verbal reasoning
and essay writing. The worst part of this process was relearning all
the math that I learned in high school. Keep in mind I hadn't even
touched a calculator for 10 years before last December. Having said
that, studying for the verbal section wasn't that much better. I had
to memorize hundreds and hundreds of words that I knew I would never
use in my life, and the worst part is, none of the words showed up on
the test. The essay writing, on the other hand, was a little bit
easier, but still was frustrating. Even though I write all the time,
I only write what I'm interested in, but for the GRE, they'll give you
some random topic that you've never thought about before so
the process still wasn't pleasant.
Fortunately, it turns out that my hard
work paid off. On the whole, I scored in the 88 percentile which is
quite good. I'm glad I don't have to take it again because the GRE
was really affecting my sleep.
Another huge burden that I had recently
was writing my essays for this semester. I unfortunately didn't do
very well last semester so I really wanted to make up for it this time,
but I don't think I was successful. I just turned in my papers a
couple of days ago and I was only satisfied with one of them. The
other one I actually rewrote just a few days prior because the first
draft was that bad. The class in general was difficult so it took
awhile for me to wrap my head around the material. In the end, I
don't really know what grade I'm going to get, but the fact that I'm
not happy with it makes me sad anyways. I truly dislike writing about
things I don't care for. I know that may sound obvious, but I feel
like I dislike it more than other people do. And although I
understand that writing about other topics will give me a wider
understanding of the field, I still don't want to do it.
Ultimately, I'm relieved to have the
GRE and my essays over with. I can now focus on my theory of natural
diversity, which is what I've been looking forward to this entire
year.
