2003-09-04 - 1:41 p.m.

So I'm taking the GRE on Monday.

I found this out today.

Why? Well, I'm dumb. I was looking at UK fellowships, which don't require the GRE, and US grad schools, whose applications are due in January, and thought "I'll be fine."

What I didn't do was check US fellowships, which are due in early October and yes, do, in fact, require the GRE.

But I'm not scared! Oh no! No, I am excited!

Why? Well I'll tell you.

Because I haven't crammed in ages. Because I do my best work at the last minute. Hell, I do my ONLY work at the last minute. I remember feeling so productive if I started a paper more than 24 hours before it was due. I LIVED by the rule that, however many pages a paper was supposed to be, that was how many hours you had to do it, with another hour budgeted in to actually print the damn thing.

I forgot how much I loved cramming, especially when there was someone else to cram with. I love staying up until 3am, keeping awake with movies or music (I remember, for one very long, arduous paper, deciding to listen to the entire Tori Amos cannon to stay awake. I had that fucker finished before the 5th album, baby!), chugging the mountain dew, scarfing the chocolate covered coffee beans, making the pizza bagels. Everything was so carefully planned, time so beautifully budgeted. Maybe I even allowed myself three hours of sleep one certain nights. But I was there with that paper the next day, and afterwards there was a stop for some food and a trip straight home. So what if there were other classes that day?

And oh, can I bullshit. I can bullshit with the best of them. Why do you think I was an English major if not to bullshit? I once got an A+ in a class having read 1 of the books out of around 10. A perfect score on the exam and 100s on all the essays. Aw-friggin-yeah!

Granted, this is standardized testing we're talking here, so not as much bullshitting is involved. But I made the PSAT, the SAT, and 3 SAT 2s my bitch, and I fully intend to do the same for this one.

So now I'm off to lock myself in my house for three days. Whether I emerge victorious or not remains to be seen. But this is the ripping off the bandage approach, the hard and fast and loose approach, the dorky-academic version of the fighter-pilot, nose-dive, Star-Wars, highway-to-the-danger-zone final assault.

The odds are a million to one. I like those odds.

Boo-yah!

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