GRE Literature in English Subject Test

The primary consumer in my life is my current project of applying to graduate school, primarily PhD (and MA) programs in British Literature.  I am not sure why, but as it inhales the vast majority of any extra time I might have, I seem to post about it very little.  Perhaps I might feel better about it and get some responses to similar experiences if I start putting myself out there a bit.

This past summer's sunshine was wasted on working in my windowless and mildly stressful office, interning in a museum basement (mausoleum), but mostly, taking a GRE prep course and studying for the general GRE.  After two attempts (and $300) I got within my target-score range.  The next project was the GRE Subject Test for English majors; a standardized test arresting development and refusing to reflect and kind or form of study in the field.: 227 multiple-choice questions in 2 hours and 50 minutes.  

I am completely finished with my English major coursework, using the rest of this year to complete my second major in History.  Needless to say, I am trained to write, not in bubbling.  At least half of the test is identification based (passage = author or author = passage).  Silly; let me count the ways.  No, I won't subject you to that, but some comfort can be gleaned perhaps because, as I understand it, half of graduate programs incorporate the scores wholistically or as a tie-breaker.  The other half requests that you don't send it, they don't want to see it and don't care.  A.K.A., I still had to take it.

So, last weekend, our first weekend of true bone-cold and lake-effect flurries, I traveled for 2 hours on 3 buses to the University of Chicago to take the exam with roughly 50 other students taking 1 of 9 different subject tests.  They were clearly all Uo'Chicago people.  Usually in such a situation you don;t have to interact, especially because I arrive with 8 minutes to spare.  I had my iPod, passport (Hawaii ID expired and I haven't been home in a year), snacks, my admissions tickets, sweater, everything they suggest.  What didn't I have?

A pencil.

An eraser.

Awesome.

So, I ask the tense young modernist poet next to me for a spare, and she offers me two bus a brand new giant eraser.  I think a positive karmic explosion erupted from our corner of the room.  I still can't grasp how much of a spaz I am capable of being.  I don't deserve grad school, I think.

Anyway, I have been reading and studying and memorizing especially for this test since September, and low and behold, ETS complete changes the question formats.  Instead of identifications, it was primarily interpretative questions.  This meant longer passage but real thinking was involved.  Rejoice!  Someone stacked the deck  in my favor.

Aja came and picked me up from Hyde Park once the ordeal was over.  Less Beowulf and Milton than I would have liked, but lots of Skakespeare and Donne.  Plus a bonus, Ambrose Bierce's definition of imagination:  "a warehouse of facts, with liar and poet in joint ownership."  My favourite Donne poem was there, The Relic, as well as Ezra Pounds infamous, "In a Station of the Metro":

The apparition of these wet faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

I feel good now because the truth is not yet on it's way.  Scores take 6 weeks, so I am told to expect them by mid-December, along with my prospective schools.  Fair-weather-friend, I will keep you posted.