Post-Holiday Rundown

Well that was a busy couple of days. After I left Maryland on Friday I went to work for six or seven hours, went home, and continued studying for the GRE. I got a brisk six hour nap, got up, and started studying for the GRE again. Then, from 1:30pm to around 5pm I faced the GRE monster. More on that below. Afterwards, Irene and I saw a movie called The Savages--which, incidentally, I highly recommend--and then called it a night. Sunday was all errands, including going back to the office to pick up all my stuff, Monday was a morning in the office and then a trip to New York for New Year's Eve, Tuesday was recovering from New Years Eve, Wednesday was a horrid back on the Fung Wah, and today is ... today.

How lucky I am to live such an eventful life. I could write a post on any of the sentences above. My guess would be that you're most interested in is the GRE.

My feel about the GRE is that I did well enough, and could have done better with more than two or three days preparation, but not well enough to tell you my actual score (which you find out immediately after the test). Suffice it to say, I did better on the verbal section than the math section, and perhaps best of all on the essay section. The test itself was surprisingly brief and I thought the way the time was apportioned was odd. The test started with essays of 45 minutes and 30 minutes and then moves on to either a 30 minute verbal section and a 38 minute math section with one experimental section thrown into the mix. And that's it. It might be less surprising if the essays weren't generally understood to be worthless. So why spend half the test on them? Why not. This is a standardized test: logical consistency is for the questions, not for the layout.

The trip back was eight hours and included a broken down bus. That's what Irene and I get for taking the Fung Wah. I'd be more bummed, but the Iowa Caucuses are turning out to be pretty interesting.