Well, I was surfing along tonight and up pops this friend I haven’t talked to in at least three months. We started talking last year and we used to talk quite a bit, but sometime in the early months of this year he just dropped out of sight. Then he popped up again this summer and we talked maybe five minutes, and I hadn’t heard from him since until now. Here he is again and he acts like he hasn’t been gone a day :p People are weird.
Well, I made it through the GRE without shaking uncontrollably, bursting into tears, or throwing up, so I’d count that as a success in itself. I managed to get some decent scores on both the verbal and the quantitative sections. My scores weren’t as high as I would have liked, and they weren’t at the kind of percentile rank that I’m used to being in on standardized tests, but they certainly weren’t bad. I think I did pretty well on the writing section, but of course I won’t have the scores for that for another 4 to 6 weeks. My verbal score is well above what my top two choices in graduate programs are looking for, but my quantitative score is somewhat below, so I’ll have to figure out a way to manage. My GPA and overall record show that the quantitative score is a bit of an anomaly (math is not my strong point, but I have been trying to relearn all sorts of math skills in the past few weeks), so that should help compensate. All in all, I should be okay, and hopefully the admissions boards will look at my overall record and not dismiss my application because of my quantitative scores.
So, next up: the subject GRE (yes, another one!). The Psychology GRE shouldn’t be as difficult as the general GRE since I’ve been taking psychology classes for the past three and a half years. At least, that what I’m hoping ;).
Well, I made it through this crazy day. I think helping with the study session was a good thing for me, since it refreshed my memory about some basic concepts in psychology. It was also quite a confidence boost, since I feel like I’ve actually remembered something that I’ve learned in my years at college, and if you know anything about the sorry state of my memory-retention capabilities, you know that’s a good thing for me. Last but not least, I have something to add to my vitae, which could help my chances of getting into the graduate program I want. The visit to career services for my vitae and personal statement also helped. The lady who talked to me said that what I have now is pretty good, and gave me a few books to look at and made some suggestions. Now that I have an idea of what to do, I can revise as necessary and turn them in Monday.
Doing those things have resolved much of the stress I’ve been feeling this week. Now I just have to deal with the short amount of time left to me for preparing for the GRE. It’s Saturday. At 9:00 AM. Eeeep. I just have to keep reminding myself that even if I don’t do as well as I’d like, my academic background should show that I’m a bright and capable student who will fit into a multitude of graduate programs. Right? Right.
Today has been and will continue to be crazy, at least schedule-wise. I had two classes this morning, then I stopped by a grad assistant’s office to talk about the study session I’m going to help her with tonight, then I went home to eat and went to my doctor’s appointment. He said that I might have to have my tonsils taken out, and I almost hope that I do so I can end this recurring respiratory illness shit. He gave me some new antibiotic (for free, yay) and then I came home, where I am now. In a half-hour or so I’ll need to leave so I can take my vitae and personal statement to the career center on campus and hopefully get some help with that. Then I have a club meeting and after that I’ll help the grad assistant with the study session for the lost little freshmen. Somewhere in all that I’ll need to find some time to eat, review the stuff for the study session, and oh yeah, breathe. Then it’s time to come home to read a chapter and take an online quiz for a class, revise the vitae and personal statement, and study for the GRE some more. I should sleep well tonight. Heh, well, I *will* sleep well tonight because I’m going to take some NyQuil so I won’t cough all night like I did last night. Anyway, I need to stop writing and get something done.
Here there be whininess:
I, like the vast majority of the rest of the people on this little ball we call the Earth, hate being sick. Hate it. And here I am, sick. This is the third time I’ve been sick since late August. That kind of frequency of sickness is highly unusual for me, since I haven’t gotten sick that often since I was little. Usually, I get sick once, maybe twice a year. I don’t know what’s going on here. It’s been the same things every time…it starts out with a sore throat, the sore throat gets worse, I start to cough, I start to get headaches, and then the sore throat is so bad that I can barely speak, and then the doctor gives me some antibiotics and it all goes away. The first time, it took about two weeks to get nasty, the second time one week, and this time two days. I have an appointment with the doctor on Wednesday. The last time I was in there, he also thought it was pretty unusual for me to be in there two times in such quick succession, so we’ll see what he says this time.
Anyway, sorry about that, I like to complain when I’m sick, but don’t we all? In other news, I’m going to take the GRE this Saturday. I’m moderately nervous about it, not so much from a lack of preparedness as from a lack of time to take the practice exams so I’ll have an idea of what to focus on in these last few days. These past few weeks have been very busy for me, and this week is the busiest of all the weeks of the semester to date. This morning I gave a presentation for class My keychain USB flash drive appears to have suddenly died on me, which left us with no powerpoint for our powerpoint presentation, eep! We did, however, print out handouts for the class, so at least they had something to look at. In my night class this evening we had to take the ACAT, which is a senior exit exam for Psychology majors. I didn’t study for it much and I’m not sure of my performance on the test, but that’s okay since it’s only required that we take it, not that we do well on it. The administration is going to implement a mandatory score eventually, but it’s in the early stages now, so they’re not quite that far yet. Tomorrow I have my two classes and a dentist appointment, which I’m going to cancel if possible since I don’t think the dentist wants to stick his hands in my mouth right now. Wednesday I have the doctor’s appointment. Wednesday and/or Thursday nights I’m going to help one of the graduate assistants conduct study sessions for a General Psychology class. Then there’s another Japanese lesson on Friday and the GRE on Saturday. Busy busy me.