GRE

So, this morning I was slated to take the GRE Subject Test at 8:30 in the Humanities Building.

I had done an irresponsible thing the night before by volunteering to help run a Bingo table at Vol Night Long, a carnival that happens around midterms to relieve stress. Luckily Dylan was merciful and let me leave whenever, which I did after 12:15. (Until the last half-hour or so, Bingo wasn't really happening... at all. So we played card games.)

But this morning I wake up an hour before, take a shower, eat breakfast, and then show up five minutes before I'm supposed to. (I live on campus, so I can generally end up at a place with a very small margin error in time.) There's no sign of anyone... wait! There's this one guy walking around, and as I enter the door into the "lobby," he asks, "Are you here for the Psych subject test?" "I'm here for a test, but not that one," I say, looking around. "It's empty," he admits, about to go looking down another hallway. I spot a sign at the other door and walk over. There is writing on the other side, the one facing outward to the plaza. It reads, "The testing center has been moved to the UT Conference Center on Henley St. Room 417."

Eyebrows quirk. We start walking. About thirty seconds into it, he says, "They better let us in." "Yeah, definitely. If not I'll be mad." A few more short exchanges pass, and then he remarks, "You know we can't get there in five minutes." "You're right." And then, simultaneously, we start running.

Now, the distance we're running - in pedestrian shoes and pants - is about a mile, but psychologically the distance is larger. We are running to the outskirts of downtown, past the World's Fair Park, across the street that turns into Broadway. I have never been in that building before, and I'm not exactly sure which building they mean at first. So we're lunging down the sidewalk, breakfast churning in our stomachs, ready to fuel us as we splatter our knowledge all over the test.

It would take between fifteen and twenty minutes for me to get there, speed walking. Including our frantic unsureness about where to be (about a minute and a half to two minutes in the Convention Center), and encountering locked doors when trying to get into the conference center, and walking in a circle inside once we enter, we get to the testing room in ten minutes. Panting. The door we encounter is locked, any late tester's worst fear. I knock. After a few glances between others, one of them opened the door. Were we late? Had it started? Why no! They weren't going to start testing until at least 9 o'clock.

I suppose we got to catch our breath and settle down, at least?

... so I did that, settling down and choosing to get some of their graciously offered coffee. Mmmm. I drank it black though, not wanting to consume too much caffeine at once and end up spazzing out over the test. Once it turned cold, that made it even easier to moderate drinking it.

As for the test itself... I can't discuss details or contents. I will just say that there were some things I didn't know, but luckily a lot of things I could guess over and have probability favor me. There were a few things I'd specifically read in certain classes (or out of them), and one in particular that I had read sometime this week! It was difficult and I feel both encouraged and discouraged by the experience, if that's possible... being knowledge and contextual based, it is exceedingly difficult to know them all. (Anything above a 700 is basically in the 99th percentile, and I can almost guarantee you that I was, at best, 650.) But I think that, given what I did know, I exercised it well, and that's the best I could ask.

I just hope that next time someone decides to change the testing place, they say, "And we will start, not at 8:30, but 9, to give you time to get here. DO NOT BE ANY LATER." That would've been... well, less distressing.