Flurries of activity
Dec. 19th, 2007 13:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillSo I took the GRE yesterday afternoon. It was an experience, but overall not bad.
It was in Fremont, a moderate drive in the rain. They pointed me to a locker when I got there and asked me to divest myself of all personal belongings. (At least airline security doesn't require that you remove your watch.) Then they handed me a legal agreement to sign. It included a paragraph that I was supposed to copy by hand.
Oh, wait -- I was supposed to copy it in cursive. In very large, bold letters it said "DO NOT PRINT". Um.
It took me over ten minutes to copy a medium-sized paragraph. I haven't done cursive since the late eighties, you see, when I gave it up as a bad job and switched to my current, fairly unique print handwriting. I think I did an okay job (it was legible), but my hand was cramping by the time I was done, and it screwed up my handwriting for a while afterward.
They took my picture, checked my ID, had me sign in, and gave me scratch paper and pencils and such. The test itself was about as I expected, having taken the SAT... the analytical writing section went okay, and I took the ten-minute break afterward. When the counter ticked down to 0:00, I was ready -- but the computer didn't come back. It just sat there. I tried pressing a few keys, clicking the mouse, and finally brought an assistant in. She tapped exactly the same keys I had (I thought) and it came back to life. Fine.
The first regular section I got (quantitative) scared me half to death, given that I know I'm weak on arithmetic without a calculator; I hacked away at it, guessed a lot, and breathed a little easier when we progressed to the Verbal section. After that... was another quantitative section. Not again, I groaned. I started on it, and it was easy. Refreshingly so. After that I was done.
The explanation is that they always throw three sections at you: a quantitative, a verbal, and a section full of new questions they're evaluating, which doesn't affect your score. They don't tell you which one that is.... but I think I could guess.
Three hours (to the minute) later, I signed out. The computer told me I got a 710 Verbal, 700 Quantitative, with the Writing score pending... as both are out of 800, I did better on this one than I did on the SAT. As the SAT had calculus questions, and I hadn't yet taken calc, I guess that's to be expected.
So I drove back home, took care of a few things, and drove out to collect![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eastbaygreg from work. We went out to Richmond to be part of a small potluck with a handful of people, none of whom I knew well... We had a good, balanced dinner and a lively discussion afterward, and I have a few more people I enjoy spending time with now. Then we came home.
This morning I droveeastbaygreg back to work, then trekked up to Davis. To my dismay I had only one quarter to feed the meters with, which netted me 10 minutes... a kind lady in the Registrar's office gave me another quarter, which was enough to cover me as I submitted a transcript request and paid the fee. Then I went to Woodland, just a short hop up 113.
The Woodland Health Care complex is well-appointed, smallish, and easy to get to and from. Much better than downtown Sac... I saw the ENT doc, who told me that I sounded like I was talking around a couple of large grapes (trust an ear-nose-throat guy to hear my swollen tonsils). He walked me through the possible consequences of having them removed, then signed a slip and said that I have my choice of when to get it done, so long as it's on a Friday. :)
So I'm currently scheduled for a tonsillectomy on February 1. It's right about the time I'd expect midterms, but it's fairly easy to take such things a few days before or after the scheduled date as long as I know in advance. I don't anticipate missing more than that Friday and perhaps the following Monday, if I don't recover as fast as I expect. I'm actually more worried about the anesthetic and any sedatives etc. than I am about the pain and swelling; from the sound of things, I've already had a worse sore throat just from the chronic throat infections I've been wrestling with for months. I haven't had a general anesthetic since before I became chemically sensitive, though.
So now I'm done for a while... TV withknaveofhearts tonight, then nothing concrete. Oh, a possible party, or flexible engagements with friends... but no appointments as such. I can relax at last.
It was in Fremont, a moderate drive in the rain. They pointed me to a locker when I got there and asked me to divest myself of all personal belongings. (At least airline security doesn't require that you remove your watch.) Then they handed me a legal agreement to sign. It included a paragraph that I was supposed to copy by hand.
Oh, wait -- I was supposed to copy it in cursive. In very large, bold letters it said "DO NOT PRINT". Um.
It took me over ten minutes to copy a medium-sized paragraph. I haven't done cursive since the late eighties, you see, when I gave it up as a bad job and switched to my current, fairly unique print handwriting. I think I did an okay job (it was legible), but my hand was cramping by the time I was done, and it screwed up my handwriting for a while afterward.
They took my picture, checked my ID, had me sign in, and gave me scratch paper and pencils and such. The test itself was about as I expected, having taken the SAT... the analytical writing section went okay, and I took the ten-minute break afterward. When the counter ticked down to 0:00, I was ready -- but the computer didn't come back. It just sat there. I tried pressing a few keys, clicking the mouse, and finally brought an assistant in. She tapped exactly the same keys I had (I thought) and it came back to life. Fine.
The first regular section I got (quantitative) scared me half to death, given that I know I'm weak on arithmetic without a calculator; I hacked away at it, guessed a lot, and breathed a little easier when we progressed to the Verbal section. After that... was another quantitative section. Not again, I groaned. I started on it, and it was easy. Refreshingly so. After that I was done.
The explanation is that they always throw three sections at you: a quantitative, a verbal, and a section full of new questions they're evaluating, which doesn't affect your score. They don't tell you which one that is.... but I think I could guess.
Three hours (to the minute) later, I signed out. The computer told me I got a 710 Verbal, 700 Quantitative, with the Writing score pending... as both are out of 800, I did better on this one than I did on the SAT. As the SAT had calculus questions, and I hadn't yet taken calc, I guess that's to be expected.
So I drove back home, took care of a few things, and drove out to collect
eastbaygreg from work. We went out to Richmond to be part of a small potluck with a handful of people, none of whom I knew well... We had a good, balanced dinner and a lively discussion afterward, and I have a few more people I enjoy spending time with now. Then we came home.This morning I drove
eastbaygreg back to work, then trekked up to Davis. To my dismay I had only one quarter to feed the meters with, which netted me 10 minutes... a kind lady in the Registrar's office gave me another quarter, which was enough to cover me as I submitted a transcript request and paid the fee. Then I went to Woodland, just a short hop up 113.The Woodland Health Care complex is well-appointed, smallish, and easy to get to and from. Much better than downtown Sac... I saw the ENT doc, who told me that I sounded like I was talking around a couple of large grapes (trust an ear-nose-throat guy to hear my swollen tonsils). He walked me through the possible consequences of having them removed, then signed a slip and said that I have my choice of when to get it done, so long as it's on a Friday. :)
So I'm currently scheduled for a tonsillectomy on February 1. It's right about the time I'd expect midterms, but it's fairly easy to take such things a few days before or after the scheduled date as long as I know in advance. I don't anticipate missing more than that Friday and perhaps the following Monday, if I don't recover as fast as I expect. I'm actually more worried about the anesthetic and any sedatives etc. than I am about the pain and swelling; from the sound of things, I've already had a worse sore throat just from the chronic throat infections I've been wrestling with for months. I haven't had a general anesthetic since before I became chemically sensitive, though.
So now I'm done for a while... TV with
knaveofhearts tonight, then nothing concrete. Oh, a possible party, or flexible engagements with friends... but no appointments as such. I can relax at last.