October 17, 2004

This Friday, I made up my mind to not complain about anything at all ever again. Very noble of me, huh? Go ahead, you can say it.

The trouble with that is. er, the challenge from which I have learned a great deal as a result of that is.. that I had the immense pleasure of taking the GRE this past Saturday. For those of you who have never heard of the GRE, some background knowledge would be nice. And what better way to explain the GRE than by telling the story of its creation in a manner that is only marginally non-fictitious?

It all started one day after the glaciers receded, when the board members of various schools realized that the 4.0-GPA-earning students they were innocently admitting to their grad school programs containing perhaps 500 megatons of explosive research equipment were - how can I put this delicately - dumber than the entire writing staff of Will & Grace combined. So they all put their heads together and decided, "We need a GRE!" "What's a GRE?" somebody asked. "We don't know, but we'll figure something out!" the rest of them replied, in perfect unison, because academia does that to people.

Then somebody had the brilliant idea that it should be a test. "just like the SAT!" "Then why don't we just use their pre-existing SAT scores?" another professor asked. Ha ha! I am only kidding. Of course nobody said that.* Instead, that professor said, "That sounds like a great idea! But shouldn't we tailor it to the unique needs of students graduating from a bachelor's program at a 4-year college?" "Yes," said another professor. Then they all went out for crab legs (because they were hungry). Then, when they returned, a professor asked, "Well, what knowledge would help us distinguish a college graduate from a high school graduate?" "Well," another professor said, "A well-trained college graduate would be able to precisely define words like 'stipple' and 'inveigle.'" "Oh yes of course!" replied all the other professors, looking at each other nervously and nodding.

So that is how come the GRE came down through history to this very day, in much the same manner as the cotton gin, or Julia Tutwiler. Now it sits in a little room in downtown Little Rock, completely unmarked in any way visible from the road, or more than five feet from the interior office door. The GRE is very special, which is why it must be kept locked in a special little room full of computers custom-designed by Tandy in 1982 for just such a special thing as the GRE, and a person is only allowed to enter it after he or she has signed roughly 5000 forms, none of which he or she has read, and even fewer of which he or she actually cares about. The forms may, for all he or she knows, state that the hypothetical person must choose a single representative gender pronoun to reference himself or herself, but he or she will sign it anyway because all he or she cares about is taking the test while he or she still has enough brain cells to form a quorum.

Then, the person is led to a special "computing machine" upon which the GRE has been installed. The "computing machine" then explains to the test taker, in intimate detail, how to "click" an "icon" in case you the last time you used a "computer" was during the "Iran-Contra scandal," and also how to "scroll" a "window." This process lasts merely "14 hours," for the entirety of which you are underneath a "massive air conditioning unit" with the quiet white noise level of a "poorly tuned garbage truck."

Then, once the computing machine has determined that you are computer-literate enough to at least use a public library electronic card catalog without electrocuting yourself, it's time to see if you know what "punctilious" means.**

Well, no, I should probably be more specific. The GRE is divided into five sections, four of them real and one of them (you don't know which) full of "experimental" questions written by very mean math professors trying to straddle the line between algebra I and non-Euclidean geometry, forcing you to waste all your brain cells until, when the verbal section pops up, you become fairly certain that both "maculated" and "expatiate" are varieties of English food.

But who's complaining? Not me! That's for sure! I am merely stating, in an off-hand manner, the absolute silliness of the belief that vocabulary is in any meaningful way correlated to actual intelligence. If it didn't show up in a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, I probably don't recognize it, and even then I probably couldn't define it out of context, meaning the particular panel that the word was in. "Macabre? I'm pretty sure that was the cartoon with all the aliens in it," helps little in analogy questions.

However, it is silly of me to complain given that my final score was still very good, even if it wasn't close to my SAT score. (If you don't know what my SAT score is, allow me to inform you that you probably never will.) In fact, my life is so full of blessings and wondrous gifts of chocolate Atkins bars that I should probably just erase this entire C-File and spend it telling you how wonderful life is. But I won't, because ultimately, I am a lazy bum. But a non-whiny lazy bum!

Sometimes you just have to take the things life throws at you. It's like they always say, when life hands you vinegar, give it to a North Carolinian because they eat it on absolutely everything, including oatmeal. Also, better go to bed now before you realize that nothing you just wrote makes any sense.

Good night!

* This makes me happy. Not bitter. Happy! Just so you know.

** Nothing.