my life 2008

From scholar to dummy in 60 minutes

I had the pleasure of taking the GRE Subject Test for Literature yesterday. I've studied off and on for it for a couple of years now. Here's a quick list of some of the works they expect you to be familiar with compiled by some poor sap who took this booger twice. (I note with interest that he left off the Bible; my test had five Bible questions on it.)

When they suggest you have read The Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by the way, they mean (naturally) that you should have read them in the original tongue. Thus, you'll be clicking happily along through Shakespeare, Milton and completely random stuff like Ambrose Bierce, then turn the page and be met with a question like this:

"And al I gif yow, Gawayn," quoþ þe gome þenne,
"For by acorde of couenaunt Ȝe craue hit as your awen."
"Þis is soth," quoþ þe segge, "I say yow þat ilke:
Þat I haf worthyly wonnen þis wonez wythinne,
Iwysse with as god wylle hit worþez to Ȝourez."
He hasppez his fayre hals his armez wythinne,
And kysses hym as comlyly as he couþe awyse.

89. These lines describe
A. an exchange of winnings according to an agreement
B. the culmination of a beheading game
C. the negotiation by a lady to obtain a kiss
D. a hostile challenge to the hero and his response
E. a hero being forgiven for his moment of weakness

90. The verse form is
A. fourteeners
B. quantitative meter
C. unrhymed iambic heptameter
D. alliterative meter
E. poulter's measure

Show your work.

OK. I added the last bit. (Incidentally, this question is from the practice booklet, available for free online.)

On 89, I frankly have no clue. 90 is D, but only because (1) I know Beowulf and other forms of early English poetry were alliterative meter and (2) I can see the alliteration. I've never even heard of fourteeners or poulter's measure, although I'm sure they exist; the GRE doesn't give you bogus answers.

This test gives you a point for every right answer and counts off a quarter point for every wrong one; unanswered questions don't count against you. This system typically frightens the timid and conservative into not marking an answer unless they're certain. I'm aggressive and liberal. I guessed my butt off.

Well. I knew a few of the answers, of course. I've read between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of that list (above) at some point or another, and I'm pretty good at narrowing the list of possibilities in multiple choice answers, which raises my chances of guessing correctly. The way I see it, if I even get one of every five answers I guess correct, I've broken even. The odds are, I'll get a few more than that correct, though, because I can almost always narrow the possible answers to two or three choices of five.

The test is 230 questions long and takes 2 hours and 50 minutes. I answered 195 questions, having made two passes through the test. (The first pass is for questions which require little reading and which I recognize/know the answers to immediately; the second pass is for educated guesses.) By my WAG, I should have gotten ~600 on the test's graded scale, which makes me competitive for the programs I want.

I'll know in about 6 weeks.

I left with my brain bleeding, and drove to the Bula property, where we're still cleaning and repairing to get it on the rental market. I picked up some garden tools and a gas can, then drove to Diamond Shamrock for some petrol. I began by filling the small gas can so I can get my chain saw running. While I was filling it--on the pavement in front of the gas pump--a man began pumping gas on the other side of the pump. He smiled at me and said hello, and went about his business. At some point, he walked into the store to pay.

I finished pumping into the container and switched the handle to my truck. While that was pumping, I capped the container and realized that I'd filled it a bit too much. It was seeping out and would likely make a mess in the pickup bed. When the truck was full, I placed the nozzle back in its holder, uncapped the hand-held gas tank, and poured some gas from it into my truck tank. At this point, the nice man walked back by.

He said, "There's an easier way to do that, you know."

d