Confession

OK, so i admit that i REALLY should have started studying for the GRE English Literature subject test A LOT earlier. A LOT earlier. Like, weeks ago. Six or seven of them. But every time i thought about doing it, i would get trapped in thinking about how in the world i would study for this stupid test, that is supposed to be able to test the knowledge covered by all English majors across the US.... WHAT? NO two English departments are alike, to the extent that they can't decide whether to call it "English" or "Literature" or something else anymore. Not to mention that my focus is going to be more on the contemporary American Studies side of things, which is almost explicitly not covered on this test. Nope, i have to know how to distinguish Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur from Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, and of course i already knew that the latter is all in prose! That's how i tell them apart, naturally!

Oy vey...so as you can probably tell, i just get too pissed off about the existence of this test to be able to actually study for it. And now that it's down to the wire... it's a too little too late. Earlier, i had a chance of doing well. Now? It's going to be all about process of elimination on those few on which i have any clue whatsoever.

Did i mention that the test is 2 and a half hours of multiple choice? No writing, no breaks?

But the way i see it is that i did really well on the general test, i got a perfect score on the writing, my transcript is great, and my recommendations will be pretty damned good. I don't think this test is going to make or break me, if anything was going to.

And if it does, well, let's put it this way. For what i want to do (and let's not tell the grad schools this, because it would make me look bad because they want to admit people who will make them famous) what i really want to do is to teach English at some no-name college or university and see how many lights i can turn on in heads who didn't know they cared. I'm not interested in starting out by preaching to the choir at liberal arts colleges full of liberal arts students. Not yet, anyway. I really want to get the bored minds of this nation thinking. And for that, UMass Amherst or UConn would certainly do. But i really want to go to Brown. For that, i should have started studying earlier.

Regretfully going to sleep now,
Lindsay the Spokeschicken