(no subject)

[kcobweb]

Busy week!

* On Monday, Elena and I met my sister and some of her friends in a small upstate town. We wandered around, ducked into music stores and consignment shops, and then ate at a New Age hippy-Christian cafe. Most of the lunch conversation I remember centered on gnomes, oddly.

* On Tuesday, samtheeagle drove over here, and we went out for sushi (okay, he avoided all the raw fish) and then we came home and talked till late. Discussed: western New York and the apocalypse (those may have been connected) and Nice Jewish Boys (=no such thing).

* On Thursday, Elena and I had a playdate that stretched into dinner time - i.e. the menfolk came home from the office in time for food. :) We made lemonade from scratch, which involved many toddler fingers, but was quite tasty nevertheless. It was all great fun, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

That? Is like waaaaay more social than I usually do. Wow. It's been fun.

This morning, I took a practice test for the GRE (their downloadable software, so it's on your computer, and mimics the actual test). The writing part SUCKED - I mean, I am basically able to write coherent grammatical sentences, but it's been a looooong time since I've done much writing other than email or LJ (and I don't think that style of prose would be welcome). I need to work on that. But I did reasonably well on the traditional math & verbal sections. (Okay, veryveryvery well on verbal, perfectly reasonable / able to get by on math.)

So. I need to schedule myself a test date. And work on writing issue / argument essays from their list of topics. And maybe study geometry and ratios/fractions/that stuff a little. Okay, that's do-able, I guess. I'm looking at September deadlines for grad school applications - mostly for the Spring 09 semester (although in one case, the deadline is September 1, and classes start like 3 weeks later).

Up next: dealing with recommendation letters and writing a Statement of Purpose. Eeeeuch.

Comments

[samtheeagle.livejournal.com]

Up next: dealing with recommendation letters and writing a Statement of Purpose.

Purpose, it's that little thing that lights a fire under your ass.
Purpose, it keeps you going strong like a car with a full tank of gas.
Everyone else has a purpose, so what's mine?
Oh look, a library card, from the year I was born: it's a sign!

(I dare you.)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

You know, they say the cardinal rule for SoPs for library school is to NOT NOT NOT NEVER EVER start it with "I love to read", because every single essay they get starts that way. So perhaps that would be a welcome breath of fresh air.....

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

oh, I don't know, I dated a nice jewish boy for a bit in college :)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

It's an old Bethans joke - on the first Bethans T-shirt, in fact. The original quote was, in fact, from samtheeagle's mother: "There's no such thing as a Nice Jewish Boy." One might assume she was talking about her son. *grin*

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

ah hah.

Rough thing for a mom to be saying about her son! Was she implying something had gone wrong in her attempts to raise one?

[samtheeagle.livejournal.com]

Nope: she's rather pleased on most fronts thankyouverymuch, so for the life of me I have Zero Clue what this line was about! ::shrug::

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

Oooh.....It's been 11 years since I took it (and I've been coasting through grad school on those scores for 7 years now...), but I don't remember a writing section. It was Verbal, Math and Analytical then. What a shame. I loved the logic puzzles. :D

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I took it December of my senior year...... 1993. That's 15 years ago. I don't feel old until I see that number. I don't know how that happened......

Yeah, the writing section is relatively new. There's an issue section - choose one of two statements and write an essay agreeing or disagreeing, citing examples, etc. And then there's an argument section, where you have to analyze the logic and sense of a passage and examine its assumptions, etc. Obviously, those aren't computer scored, but are read by humans. If you know how to write a grammatical sentence and are *somewhat* organized, you can get a 4 (out of a 1-6 scale).