Don’t get me wrong, I love words. They are powerful tools for education and emotionalism. Writing is an art-form. Words are the medium.
I recently took the GRE. The experience made me question my love of words. Some words, such as “Agog,” seemed to defy the standard Greek or Latin root transcription. Mostly, it seemed to be an ass-backwards way to say “highly excited.” Still, I “mastered” new words that, with the hopes of graduate schools, could infuse my writing with a highly educated prose unmatched by anyone with less than a graduate education. Alas, I may be a maturating erudite, but I hope to keep some boorish ways.
The preparation, the hours spent sitting beside my sleeping wife staring at a screen, a Kaplan book, or my half-wit attempt at vocabulary flash cards while bitter, blazing, black coffee cooled to an undrinkable state, caused grief beyond my expectations. The muscles in my neck seized and rearranged my spine, which caused the worst pain I felt since my second hernia surgery. Did I mention I hold my stress in my neck?
More than excruciating pain, I lost confidence in my ability to learn. I forgot I was capable. Preparing for the GRE expedited my mental status to the days following my first attempt at college. In that other life I maintained a .6 GPA. I felt lost and lethargic. I was a loiterer on the edge of academia; my feet upon a tapestry waiting to be pulled out from under. In short, I felt dumb. For me, a child of two malcontent and benighted parents, there is little worse than feeling imbecilic.
I am not, and never was, an imbecile. Yet there is something about the test and the entire process that wreaks of damnation. That this test, four hours of perspiration and desperation, could stand in the way of years of hard work, whether true or not, is often an unbearable burden. Dreams are derailed by such malignant conditions. Some professors say the test does not matter. They say recommendations, GPA, passion, and ability far outweigh a test of aptitude. Some say the test is all that matters. It could mean the difference, not whether a graduate program will accept you, but whether they will help you financially. Both schools of thought are correct. It matters as much as it does not. The test is ineluctable. It is a file in the desk of the person who says “Yes” or “No.” For me, there is no reward for arguing its merit. The only way out is to give up on the endeavor, which I will never do.
I am not certain about the entirety of what the GRE experience taught me. I still have stepping-stones to traverse. I have applications to fill out, statements of purpose to write, potential advisers to introduce myself to, and a growing list of tasks left before I have the freedom to sit, wait, and see if I can continue down my chosen path.
I can only do so much and I have done as much as I can.
An immense feeling of levity washed over me when I ended the test. The pain in my neck still lingered as a relic of my recent distention. The haze in my eyes from lack of sleep and a special, specific indifference to all that should matter lifted incrementally as the weekend slipped away. Today, for the first time since mid-Summer, I felt a pang of creativity. The proclivity to write, once chased into the darkness of insecurity by a test of aptitude, reared within me.
A passion returned.
Anthony Sadler 