Turn out my what???

You are told to take off your watch and turn off your cell phone and put them into a locker, along with everything else you brought along – backpack, jacket, bike helmet, all of it, except for your driver’s license, which you have to take out of your wallet and hand to the attendant. The attendant locks the door and notes your locker number on a clipboard.

You are instructed to place your bottle of water into a plastic box, and to store your Luna bar and pear on a shelf. The paper towel that you had used to wrap up your pear must be thrown out and replaced with a baggie that they provide.

When you ask if you can keep the paper towel to use as a tissue, the answer is no, they will provide you with that item if needed.

Next you are commanded to turn out your pockets, all five of them, even the teeny coin pocket you hadn’t even noticed was in this pair of jeans. Satisfied that all pockets are empty, the attendant hands you the license and two cards, one with your cubicle number printed on it, the other with the locker letter, and gives you precise directions for how these three items are to be displayed next to your computer.

Another attendant hands you a clipboard and indicates the place for your signature, compares it to the signature on your driver’s license, and closely scrutinizes the picture to make sure it looks like the person standing in front of her. Finally everything is done and it’s time to go into The Room …

… for a CIA interrogation?

… for a meeting with the President?

… for a stay in the slammer?

None of the above. You are here to take your GRE, the Graduate Record Exam required for your application to a master’s program.

For several years I’ve been hearing about the dreaded GRE from applicants to the department where I work, and knew that there were major – and well-founded – concerns about fraud in the test-taking process. Now I was experiencing the result of those concerns first-hand. It’s positively surreal. When you leave The Room for a break (which is only allowed at a specific time regardless of what your bladder would prefer) you have to do the sign-the-log-and-show-your-license routine again. When break time is over, you repeat the process, plus turn out your pockets, again. At the end of the test you go through the whole song and dance, pockets and all, one last time before they return your license and allow you to reclaim your belongings and get out of Dodge.

The Kaplan GRE practice book advises test-takers to keep their composure through the exam, to not panic and rush through the questions for fear of running out of time. It should also say to stay calm and un-intimidated during this intense and somewhat invasive security preparation. The least it could do is advise wearing pocketless pants!

Composure in the days preceding the exam wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Better than having pre-GRE jitters that shut down your brain. Here’s a short list of items that I lost during the last few days as testing day approached. (I’ll just tell you about the major episodes!)

First I discovered my university ID card was no longer hooked to my key ring because its plastic holder had broken. After calling two stores and driving to every other place I’d gone recently, I found the card on the floor of the car, right under my foot, near the gas pedal.

Meanwhile, though, I had discovered that my backpack hadn’t come home with me, and had rushed off to work hoping I’d left it under my desk and not on the sidewalk next to the bike rack. Hooray, it was safely ensconced in my office. Another near disaster averted.

The next day I couldn’t find my entire set of keys, along with my I-card that was now attached via a new holder, and all that would be a major chore to replace. It includes my house key, two keys for locking my bike, three keys to the Bahá'í Center, and six keys to my office, one of which is the key to our box of keys. Truth!

Since I made this latest loss discovery while rushing to get out the door for an appointment, I had to wait till I came back home to check the shed and see if I’d somehow put my keys in there when I locked up my bike after work. Yup, that’s where I found them, an hour later, sitting safely in my bike basket. Another disaster averted.

Then there was the Case of the Lost Earring.

Earlier that day, when I arrived at work I’d discovered that my right ear lobe was naked. The missing earring was the “dangle” type that can accidentally fall out or be pulled out, so I searched all around my desk and inside my jacket and retraced my path into the building hoping to find it. Nothing. Nowhere. Must have gone to the lost earring room, which is located next door to the room full of one-of-a-pair socks.

A little while later I was talking to a co-worker when she stopped in mid-sentence to ask why I was wearing two earrings in my left ear!

Clearly the prospect of taking the dreaded GRE was deranging what was left of my brain after several days of cramming for the exam. I’d been studying for weeks, but during the last few days had moved that study to the top of my “to do” list, and had been spending every spare minute frantically taking practice verbal tests and reviewing a plethora of vocabulary words – while completely ignoring the preparatory exercises for the quantitative part of the exam.

Why bother? When it comes to algebra and calculus and geometry, not only can I not decipher the answers, I don’t even understand the questions! So I had decided to spend all my study time on the verbal test, where I had a chance to get a decent grade. After all, why should a Master’s program in creative writing care about a silly old math score? Anyway, that’s my reasoning and I hope it’s accurate, because yesterday I sailed through the quantitative section of the exam at the speed of light. Easy to do if you’re not even reading most of the questions!

The computer-based GRE gives you the verbal and quantitative scores immediately upon completion of the exam. For the writing score, which involves actual human beings grading your two essays, you have to wait a couple weeks, so I don’t have my complete results yet, but am happy to report that my verbal score was 660 (out of 800) and my quantitative score was 340. I see applicant GRE scores all the time in my work, so I know that 660 is respectable and 340 is amazing -- for complete guesswork!

Anyway, that hurdle is past now and I can get on to finishing my application, which involves making sure my recommenders get their letters posted well before the deadline, writing a cogent and convincing personal statement about my reasons for applying, preparing an appropriate resumé, and deciding what writing samples to provide that will prove I’m clearly ready to become the Grandma Moses of literature.

(I also plan to write a statement highlighting the fact that my GPA for the courses I’ve taken since 2001 is 3.67 and making a hopefully effective case for ignoring my overall GPA which includes all the courses I took in the 1960’s. It’s a pretty sad GPA. It’s beyond sad. We don’t want even to talk about it!)

In my job I’ve been known to rail against students who start their on-line applications early in the admission season but don’t submit them until the deadline day, when about 75% of all the applications and supporting materials land on my desk. Applications and materials I could have been leisurely preparing for faculty review if they had arrived bit by bit during the last several weeks, but that I now have to rush to completion so those oh-so-eager reviewers – some of them metaphorically sitting on my shoulders as I work – can start evaluating them.

But I’m a reformed woman now. I’ve seen the light and I will never rail again, because now I understand. Finishing the application is scary. Once you hit the submit button, you’re done. Finis. Kaput. For better or worse, you’ve pinned yourself to the wall and there's nothing else you can do to convince your proposed department to accept you as a student. So you put that moment off for as long as possible, and keep the application open and available while you consider whether to change this part or add to that part or delete some other part in order to make it as perfect an application as possible.

But I don’t want some other harried and frantic admissions processor railing against me, so I’m aiming to finish and submit in the next few weeks, at least a month before the deadline. And I promise you, this is the last you’ll have to read about the whole subject until I receive my decision, whatever it is.

And next week I’ll get back to those skating stories. You know, the ones about fire on ice, etc.? Promise.

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