This is the first sentence of the first post of the month thing.
January: First thing: housecleaning!
February: I used to go see Ani Difranco twice a year, in Chicago and in St. Louis.
March: OK, I have a queue of draft post ideas as long as my arm, but they're going to have to continue to wait.
April: I have been off my game for a while.
May: I made a low-carb chicken pot pie for dinner tonight.
June: I sometimes take my childhood for granted.
July: One of my favorite things about Ellie right now is her generosity.
August: I went to the mall today with my mom and Ellie.
September: We'll consider this one prep work for our upcoming Disney trip.
October: Paul has started feeding Ellie All Bran in the morning, which I think is hilarious.
November: This morning, thanks to wonderful friends keeping her up late for us last night, Ellie slept in a little.
December: Yesterday, I passed a new pregnancy milestone.
Clearly, I need to work on my first lines. I think it would have been more interesting to look at the titles of the first posts for each month. They told more of a story.
In other news, I am 40 weeks pregnant, Wahoo! My due date is a few days from now, and I don't think I'll go too far over it. (My official due date is Wednesday, though the perinatal specialist gave me a due date of this Sunday.) Ellie too was due on a Wednesday, and I went into labor on Friday night for a Saturday morning delivery. We'll see what happens this weekend!
I took the GRE this morning. I didn't love the experience, especially since my intended 3 weeks of study in early November became two intense nights of study in early January. And there was a mix-up about the testing center that involved me arriving at the "wrong" place then having to drive across town and start more than an hour later than planned.
It will be interesting to see how my essays score; I feel like they went pretty well. I enjoy writing, as always, and have missed it of late (hello, blog!) The Verbal section was fun, though a bit rushed at the end, and I scored well on it (700 out of 800, 97th percentile). The "Quantitative" section, however, was a bomb. I mean, a real bomb.
With little time to study and no practice test, I gauged the time all wrong, only answering 18 out of 28 questions (and not even having time to fill in all Cs at the end - I just left 10 questions blank!). I remembered enough elementary math to bang through many of the problems . . . given enough time, which I clearly didn't have. For example, I needed to find the length of a line. I could make it into a right triangle, and I knew the length of one side and the measure of one angle of the triangle. It was a 30-60-90 triangle, and not enough information to use the Pythagorean Theorem. I remember just enough to know that there's a formula for the length of the sides of a 30-60-90 triangle, but not the actual formula. I mean, seriously! This is relevant how?!! I'm all about a test of quantitative reasoning, but remembering formulas from Jr. High School is just not where it's at, folks.
So. The GRE is done. I'm due soon. And now I'm about to approach a few people, hat in hand, to ask for last-minute recommendations for last-minute applications. Perhaps I'll learn something useful to assist me in the reapplication process next year.
Don't be so sure that you're going to have to reapply!
ReplyDeleteI was so glad to see a blog post today. Sorry about the test, you may have done better than you think.
ReplyDeleteWow, Superwoman, you took the GRE in your last month of pregnancy? I have been lurking on your blog for a long while now, since finding out prenatally that my son has an AV Canal defect and Down Syndrome. Your words and experiences truly helped me see the light. I can't thank you enough.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to you for a quick and painless labor!
Don't count your chickens until they are hatched.. re: the GRE. I sucked on the WHOLE ENTIRE thing (940 total). Not just one section. And, here I am in my second semester as a PhD student and preparing to implement my first research study 1 March. Oh, and the program I'm in is a top 5 program in my field. And, apparently I was one of the talked about applicants that they accepted. My point? GRE's are important, but not dyed in the wool important. Grad school is about the WHOLE package, not just once piece of it.
ReplyDeleteYeah for baby coming. Congrats. :)
I can't wait for the baby. I keep checking on you.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed that you took the GRE 40 weeks pregnant. Wow!
PPB, I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Most of the programs I'm applying to are very small, admitting only 5 or 6 students per year. And this isn't quite the carefully considered application I'd hoped to send, nor am I applying to as many programs as I'd hoped . . .
ReplyDeleteRebecca and Brooke, thanks! I am OK with how I did on the GRE, actually. I just think that requiring knowledge of obscure geometry formulas is a ridiculous way to test "quantitative reasoning" for 30-somethings applying to grad school. I mean, really!
Jen, nice to meet you! When things have quieted down a bit, after the baby, I hope to follow you back home and read your writing. I don't meet too many women who've been through exactly what I went through!
CCW, me too! And I think I freaked the (older) men running the testing center out a bit when I showed up all tense and really really pregnant. I thought about bringing in a towel to keep in my locker, "just in case" but decided against it. Luckily, there was no water breakage!
Sarahlynn,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that requiring the GRE for grad school is stupid. I said that very thing to a family friend who is the former department head of my department, but at Virginia Tech. He said he thought the GRE was a valid test for grad school. *roll eyes* Algebra and Geometry are not testing my ability to do this. This is more a test of maschoism or not. Those of us who get pleasure from punishing ourselves are far more successful at this endeavor. :)