The truth is that I’ve been so distracted and stressed out that I haven’t made time to study, and a lack of study sessions leads to a lack of blog posts about studying. Go figure.

This is why I created the blog in the first place. I need personal accountability. I need a visual record of my progress (or lack thereof) to keep me on track. I need to study every day so that I have something to post about.

First, the excuses:

I think I’m getting a new job. On March 11, I was 90% sure about it. Every day since then, my confidence has risen by about .5%. Today, I am 97% sure that I’m getting a new job. This should be exciting and wonderful and energizing and a true thumbs-up celebratory moment. There’s a world of difference between what should be and what is. I am spending most of my time dwelling in the 3% lack of confidence, and already stressing about all of the work I’m going to have to do in my new job. I’m thinking about all of the details I will have to track, and the possibility of a double load while I transition from my old job and start my new one. My current assumption is that I will be responsible for both jobs for an unknown period of time. While it sounds ridiculous, it’s not too far fetched given the nature of working from home for many different people who live in many different time zones.

Joe pointed out that I’m living the dream. I’m climbing up the career ladder in the midst of a nasty recession while working from the comfort of home. What’s more is that I work with wonderful people for an organization that seeks to make the world a better place. My work is interesting, fun, flexible, and gives me a sense of purpose. These are all good things. This morning, the first thing I did for work was watch an inspiring documentary and then write about it. You can’t ask for much more than that.

I acknowledge that I am extremely fortunate. I am so very thankful for what I have. Transitions are still stressful as all hell.

To relax, I’ve been going to yoga and juicing vegetables. I’ve been watching indie comedrama flicks (I think I made that word up; don’t study it), and depressing (er, funny?) documentaries about failed actors who dress up like superheros for tourists while trying to get discovered by celeb agents in Hollywood (highly recommended — add this one to your Netflix queue).

And now I’m starting to feel the slacker’s guilt kick in. I shouldn’t be watching movies and pitying myself for snagging an exciting new job. I should be immersed in the verbose grandeur of GRE vocab and practice tests. I should be diligently studying for an hour every freaking day, and writing about it on my blog, dammit.

The cruel part is that is so much easier to get off track than to get back on it. I am learning that motivation and diligence are two of the most difficult components of any study plan, AND two of the most overlooked.

My lesson of the day is that I can’t plan for life to be consistently average. It would be both boring and unrealistic. Thus, I can’t assume that my study plan will be consistently productive. Sometimes you gotta leave a little wiggle room to watch superheros fail.

Well, you were wrong. GRE words can kill. It’s not that any one word is too difficult to learn — it’s just that there are literally thousands of the darned buggers. And many of them (like propitiation) make absolutely no sense.

* There’s a cheesy version of the phrase that goes “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can break our hearts.” Oh, ain’t that sweet? (vomit)

On the other hand, there are many GRE words that I’m really enjoying. For example, prestidigitation. Can you guess what it means?

Hints:
1. “presti” — kinda sounds like presto-chango magic trick material in my book.
2. “digit” — Count some digits. What are you counting? Your fingers, right? Digitation could easily be the ever popular five-finger discount.

Prestidigitation means sleight of hand, as in, “Wow, that guy’s prestidigitation was impressive. I was completely stumped when he made my wallet disappear before my eyes.”

They say that the best way to learn vocabulary is to read a lot of varied sources over the course of your lifetime. I think that’s a load of bull-crap. I don’t know how many books I’d have to read before encountering the word “prestidigitation.” Good authors are primarily interested in relaying a message; they do not win fans by filling their pages with esoteric fluff and confusing their readers. I read a lot of online content on a daily basis, but major newspapers, blogs, and magazines tend to write at the 6th grade level so they can reach a broad audience. That’s why reading alone is not my preferred strategy for learning GRE vocab.

My daily study habits now include 20 minutes per day studying vocab. That’s two 10-minute vocab study sessions, covering 10 words in each session. You’d be surprised by how well you can remember vocabulary words when you spend a full 60-seconds with each individual word. I also try to form a sentence for each new vocab word that I learn. That said, I’m going to write a passage using GRE vocabulary. THIS is the type of reading that would help me to learn new vocabulary words. This is the type of reading that does not exist, because no one actually wants to read it.

[Right: Kerouac helps me study]

For the sake of this exercise, I’m going to pick on my substitute study-buddy Kerouac (Joe is on the other side of the world for three weeks, so he has been temporarily relieved of his study-buddy duties, including the duty of being picked on for practice sentence building exercises). I am making fun of Kerouac solely because he cannot read, and therefore he can’t complain. Kerouac also happens to have a borderline neurotic obsession with wheatgrass, which is both funny and slightly disturbing. Without further ado…

Kerouac’s solicitous engrossment with his wheatgrass often causes him to precipitate in consuming a tremendous amount of plant matter in a less-than-abstemious manner. He is a true itinerant who will wander from living room to kitchen and back with his perspicacity tuned to quickly identify any green, living thing. When I attempt to stymie his access to wheatgrass, he becomes truculent and proceeds to fulminate against me. My attempts to prevent him from barfing on too much wheatgrass are construed as perfidy, and he considers my consolations apocryphal at best. Kerouac becomes recalcitrant and invidious in absence of his crackgrass, and may even decide to poop on the carpet to illustrate his disapproval. His plangent cries can be heard from anywhere in the apartment; he sings a solemn dirge for his wheatgrass that soon devolves into a tautology of muh-rao’s, rawr’s, and mraow’s. Timorous of the ineluctable wrath of Kerouac, I recant my assertion that he needs to chill out on the wheatgrass. I return his plant, and he showers me with approbations. The End.

An ideal GRE book would be written like my Kerouac story. An interesting read? Not so much. The denouement of this tale is that I won’t rely on cool books and funny articles alone to get me through the GRE.

First off, I’ll let you know that I did in fact study some vocab just before falling asleep last night. And no, I cannot for the life of me remember if I had dreams about GRE vocabulary. I quizzed myself on a short stack of flash cards as soon as I woke up this morning, and I was pleased to find that I remembered most of last night’s vocab, despite attempting to quiz myself while trudging through the foggy haze that is 8:30am.

I was especially pleased that I remembered the definition of propitiation, which is something that makes one less angry. This word was especially difficult for me to remember, since pro and pitiate are two word parts that do not remind me of anger in any way, shape, or form. I think it’s easier to remember the word if I define propitiate as to make peace with. Pro is generally a favorable thing, (e.g. progress, proactive, pro-choice) and a pit is a brown stone-like object that comes from a peach, which contains 4 of the 5 letters in peace. Thus, propitiate is to act in favor of peach, ahem, peace. (Do not question the legitimacy of my mnemonics. Just understand that they work, okay?)

I have a plan to measure the efficacy of studying vocab before sleep, but I’ll have to go through a 7-day testing phase before I can release the results of my very unscientific and non-laboratory-standards-based study. More to come on this one.

In the mean time, I will go over a few tips I’ve learned about working through analogies.

As a refresher, here’s what an analogy looks like:

CAT: ANIMAL
a. feather: bird
b. snake: fierce
c. doctor: smart
d. microwave: appliance
e. Thistle Fluff Tiger Bear: Jesus

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is create a sentence to describe the analogy. Even if you’re pretty sure you know the relationship between a cat and an animal, you gotta make a sentence. For this analogy, your sentence could be something like “A cat is a type of animal.” Simple, right?

2. Remember that the parts of speech in the correct answer will always match the parts of speech in the question. If the first word in the analogy is a verb, the first word in the answer must also be a verb. This is easy to forget. In the example above, both “cat” and “animal” are nouns. Thus, both words in the correct answer choice will also be nouns. For answer B, the second word is “fierce,” which is an adjective. Answer B is wrong.

3. The ETS will try to trick you by presenting answer choices that have common associations, but no formal connection in a dictionary definition. Many people consider doctors to be smart, and it’s certainly true that many doctors are very intelligent. But is “smart” part of the definition for doctor? Is there a such thing as a stupid doctor? Why yes, and his name is Dr. Evil. Answer C is incorrect.

4. Remember to read through your original sentence for every answer choice. “A cat is a type of animal.” Is a microwave a type of appliance? Yes it is. This is the correct answer.

5. For the last one, you should ask the question: Is a Thistle Fluff Tiger Bear a type of Jesus? Perhaps, but you’re not exactly sure what a Thistle Fluff Tiger Bear is. You should really study your vocab. Then ask the question, What Would Thistle Fluff Tiger Bear Do?

The answers are right before your eyes.

If I spend some time with definitions before bed, and then check the definitions again when I wake up in the morning, I’m guessing that I’ll have a much easier time remembering my word list. The key is to trick my brain into thinking that this crap is important and worth remembering. If I force my brain to pull definitions at various times throughout the day, perhaps it will develop more efficient ways to store this information, and then tweak its standard operating procedure to make the whole process less painful. That’s not to say that studying is painful when you have a cozy electric blanket and a few slices of pizza next to your bed. With the addition of pizza, studying actually kinda rocks.

Here’s another idea that I’m toying with: using my dreams to help me study. I remember playing piano as a kid, and falling asleep thinking about the compositions. I would play the songs in my dreams, taking careful note of when and where my fingers were supposed to hit the keys. When I woke up the next morning, I could play the song better. I’ve had similar luck with high school and college tests. I’m not sure if dreaming about a particular subject was the factor that caused me to remember the information, but you can’t argue with the results.

Over the past few years, I’ve become pretty adept at lucid dreaming, meaning that I’m able to control my dreams with some degree of accuracy. But as it is with any great super-power, there are limits.

I read somewhere, in some sleep study book (and feel free to disregard this unsubstantiated claim at your discretion—I sorely apologize for my lack of a proper source and citation), that the human brain is generally unable to interpret sequences of numbers and symbols during the REM cycle of sleep. This means that it’s virtually impossible to read while you dream. I intentionally tested this theory a few months ago, during a lucid dream. Skeptical of the claim that you can’t organize written language during REM sleep, I located a book in my dream and opened it up to ascertain its difficulty. What I found was that I couldn’t read. The letters and words were blurry, and the more I tried to focus on the words, the more my brain hurt (yes, physically hurt, like a headache in a dream). I could pick up a word here or a letter there, but I had a very strong inclination to become distracted by the pictures on the pages and the other books on the shelf. My dreaming brain wanted nothing more than to abandon the excruciating task of trying to organize writing into cohesive thoughts and patterns. I need to do more research on this particular topic, but it seems that the dreaming brain is not geared towards this type of information processing.

What this means is that I’m not sure how GRE dream study sessions will work out. Dream or no dream, it certainly couldn’t hurt to study before bed. In any case, I’m curious as to how much bedtime studying will improve my overall retention of information.

That said, I’m tired. More testing tonight.

The automated process of determining GRE test scores is called Computer Adaptive Testing, or CAT. At the beginning of a multiple choice section, CAT assumes that you are an average test-taker with an average score of about 620 for math and 460 for verbal. (Let’s assume you’re working on the verbal section). CAT starts the test by giving you a question that roughly 50% of test takers answer correctly. If you answer the first one incorrectly, CAT will assume that your final score will fall between 200 and 460. It will then ask a new question that, say, 75% of test takers answered correctly. If you get that one wrong, CAT will ask a new question that 90% of test takers answered correctly. And so on.

Conversely, the more questions you answer correctly, the harder the questions become. It’s a cruel joke that test takers are punished for doing well, but the ETS seems to think it’s an effective system. Wikipedia claims that this method produces roughly double the score accuracy of a paper test using the same number of questions.

Point of interest from the Wiki article: “An examinee can miss one or more questions on a multiple-choice section and still receive a perfect score of 800.” << I never would have guessed.

The key point is that the questions in the beginning are weighted more than the questions at the end of the test. At the beginning, CAT is trying to determine your approximate score range between 200 and 800 points. At the end, CAT is trying to zero in on your final score, say, between 500 and 540 points. I suppose if you’ve earned 800 points without a hiccup in the first 25 questions, you could theoretically miss a question or two at the end and not fall back down to the 700′s. Very interesting.

To show you how it works, a stats/computer guy named Lawrence Rudner created an interactive application that allows you to see the inner-workings of a CAT system. He also provides a great explanation about the history, terminology, and Item Response Theory behind CAT testing systems. Here’s a snippet about why Rudner thinks CAT is the way to go:

Paper-and-pencil tests are typically “fixed-item” tests in which the examinees answer the same questions within a given test booklet. Since everyone takes every item, all examinees are administered items that are either very easy or very difficult for them. These easy and hard items…provide relatively little information about the examinee’s ability level. Consequently, large numbers of items and examinees are needed to obtain a modest degree of precision.

With computer adaptive tests, the examinee’s ability level relative to a norm group can be iteratively estimated during the testing process and items can be selected based on the current ability estimate. Examinees can be given the items that maximize the information (within constraints) about their ability levels from the item responses. Thus, examinees will receive few items that are very easy or very hard for them. This tailored item selection can result in reduced standard errors and greater precision with only a handful of properly selected items.

Rudner’s statistical analysis and explanations are nothing short of fascinating — well, I mean they’re kinda cool to a computer nerd like me. With a new understanding of how the GRE is evaluated, should this change the way that test-takers take the test? Specifically, if the questions at the beginning of a section count more towards your final score, then logically you’d want to spend more time working on the first half of the test, right? Well, it depends.

My first GRE study book to arrive in the mail, Cracking the GRE 2010 Edition (The Princeton Review), includes some advice on pacing. The basic gist is that if you expect to earn an extremely high score (around 800), you should spend an equal amount of time on each question. If you’re going for a less impressive score (around 500 – 600), you should spend more time on the early questions.

I’m shooting for the moon, so it looks like I’ll be divvying up my questions with equal time and attention for each. CAT, watch out.

When I did a quick search for GRE Android applications, 27 apps appeared on my screen. To be fair, three of those “GRE” apps were actually Hangman games. Many of the available GRE, GMAT, and SAT apps for Droid cost a few bucks, some of them are free, and most of them are vocab-based. GRE Vocab Droid Lite had the best reviews and it was free, so I decided to give it a shot. After a few minutes of scanning through the 20-word list on the lite version, I decided to spend five bucks and download the 6,000-word pro version.

The program comes with a flashcard-like interface where you can flip through words and definitions by tapping on the screen. You can mark the words you don’t know, and set difficulty levels or “weights” for various words. If you don’t want to read the words on your screen, you can listen to a playback of the words and definitions instead. [Insert female robot voice here]. You can also import additional word lists and take multiple choice vocab quizzes.

[Left: A screenshot of a GRE Vocab Droid quiz question, from the Androlib website.]

I bought the app five days ago, and thus far I have spent a total of about two hours sorting through the first 1,113 words. I’ve marked 397 of those words for my vocab list. If we do a bit of quick math, it looks like I’ll end up with a vocab list of about 2,136 words once I finish sorting. If you figure that I have about 120 days before my test, that means I will need to memorize about 17.8 words per day. Sure, I believe in miracles, but these numbers are pure fantasy.

Hopefully the task of expanding my GRE-worthy vocabulary won’t be as difficult as it sounds. Many of the words on my vocab list are words that I already *sorta* know, but was unable to define accurately in a just a few words. Also, many of my vocab words are just different forms of a common root word. I included all word variations based upon my notion that repetition isn’t antithetical to the goal of memorization and retention. Then again, a final list of more than 2,000 words IS antithetical to said goal. Go figure.

A quick review of the pros and cons of GRE Vocab Droid Pro:

PROS:

1. 6,000 words ain’t bad for $5. It includes a lot of difficult words with simple, easy-to-understand definitions.

2. I like how easy it is to mark words and categorize them by weight/difficulty.

3. The program is simple, and I like spending a few minutes here and there going over some of the flashcards. It’s a great 5-minute activity while you’re standing in line, waiting for the bus, taking a break from work, sitting on the toilet, etc. I personally believe that repeated exposure to a few different words throughout the course of a day is a more effective form of studying than attempting to memorize a large quantity of words in a single sitting.

CONS:

1. The application encounters errors and force closes quite frequently. I’m not sure what that’s about. It doesn’t bother me very much, but it’s something the developers should address.

2. It would be nice to be able to control the Female Robot Voice. She speaks quickly and doesn’t give me enough time to digest the word and definition. Speed control would be wonderful. I would also love to have greater control over the voice volume, without having to remember to turn down my phone’s media volume prior to launching the app. I’ve already embarrassed myself in public by launching the application, only to hear Ms. Female Robot Voice unabashedly announce the definition of “arrear” to a crowd of Chicagoans. Not fun, Ms. Robot.

I really enjoy the option of studying when I’m away from home. I’ll definitely test out some other mobile study tools in the upcoming weeks. Let me know if you have any good ones.

My intention was to discover some cool study blogs, some analytical review sites, and perhaps a few more practice tests. I’m not sure exactly what I expected to encounter, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t it:

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about the above heading that makes me wary of the quality of this company’s GRE study products. I found some real gems on the web, and they’re all hanging out at the tippy-top of the prestigious Google search results page.

[Left: These people look so stoked about their GRE scores. I love the dramatic shadow on the text. They really made this one pop.]

These websites all want to sell me a high test score. They all claim to know the “secret” to GRE success, developed by their highly esteemed team of unnamed “scientific experts.” A few quotes:

The material in this blogspot is absolutely FREE! So for students taking GRE Exam, this is one and only, the Best, place to prepare. You have reached the right place, which is only and only for GRE Exam Preparation.

So grab this opportunity…!! What are you waiting for?
Crack the GRE by making the best possible use of this blogspot.

There are lots and lots of preparation stuffs in this wonderful blogspot. From GRE Exam Structure and Exam Tips to GRE Weblinks, and useful Softwares.

Here is the collection of all possible and important GRE material useful for you. You will then need not to search in any website or bookstore.

So, prepare smartly and get the great score!

Oh dear. So much for the writing portion of the GRE. And check out this one:

“Three Reasons To Believe What We Say
Reason one: Our company’s name is Mometrix Media LLC…”

Love it. You had me at “Mometrix.” With a name like that, what’s not to believe? Later on in the text Mometrix tells us that we shouldn’t “believe it just yet. Read the testimonials:”

I just had to thank you guys for the test prep! I bought the guide as a last minute prep, I mean maybe 5 hours before the test. Like I said, I had ZERO preparation! I was nervous about the test let alone receiving the score I needed. I read the guide through only once before test time and needless to say, the only way I passed was thanks to your refresher!! Brian

This is great. Similar to an IQ test, the GRE is not a test that you can “pass” or “fail,” but it’s good to know that Brian thinks he passed. It’s also good to know that this product benefits those who completely lack study skills and/or a sense of ambition. Awesome.

[Right: I like the white suit jacket—I think I might wear one of those during my practice test, too. Plus, I want to believe that James Bond and I are in this together.]

For all of the red and yellow flashing lights and exclamation points asking you to “CLICK HERE NOW!!!!”, one would logically assume that most GRE sites are in fact selling porn or fake diet pills. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. I suppose the promise of success can be so alluring that it trumps common sense.

I found a few reasonably acceptable GRE related websites, and I added them to my blogroll. I haven’t had much time to read through the listed websites, so I can’t vouch for their overall quality. I’m hoping to find some better resources soon.

I’ve also expanded my research to include GMAT materials. From my understanding, the GMAT is very similar to the GRE. The main difference is that the GMAT has an easier verbal section and the GRE has an easier math section. The other main difference is that the GMAT is for management/MBA programs and the GRE is for other grad programs.

At this point, I honestly don’t know what type of grad program I’d like to complete. I’m leaning towards an MBA, but I recognize that I have a tendency to change my mind quite frequently. I’m now planning to take both the GRE and the GMAT in July. It couldn’t hurt my application to have two test scores on file. Colleges rarely penalize for being overly ambitious. Why not?

]]> http://www.grespot.com/?feed=rss2&p=35 1 http://www.grespot.com/?p=22 http://www.grespot.com/?p=22#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:32:42 +0000 admin http://www.grespot.com/?p=22 Without the $1,200 expense of a GRE course, I figured that I could justify plunking down some cash for a good GRE study book. Kaplan’s, Barron’s, and Princeton’s all appeared to be popular choices. I didn’t know which one to buy, so I ordered all three (used) on Half.com for $70 total. I had thought about borrowing these books from the library, but the free option also has its disadvantages, such as time limits and a serious scarcity of editions newer than 2003.

It’ll be a few days before the books arrive, so Joe (my friend, my lover, the guy who is now standing in my home office attempting to tie a bright yellow turban around his head) found some online practice tests for us to take. He has decided to take the GREs with me next July. Now I have a study buddy.

“Don’t you think we should do at least a little bit of studying before we attempt a practice test?” I asked.

“Nope. We should take the practice test first so that we know what we’re in for. It will give us a better idea of what we need to study.” Joe had already printed out the practice tests.

“Ready? And go. You have 45 minutes to complete the math section.”

Five minutes into the test and we were sweating, despite an abundance of cold, drafty air in our living room. We glanced at each other nervously and silently repeated “oh, shit.” The test wasn’t surprising in its difficulty; it was embarrassing in its simplicity. It was all high school math and I was struggling to remember half of it (Or was I only remembering [8/15-y^2+y] of it?). I could’ve aced an Algebra 2 exam while blindfolded and wrestling a crocodile…when I was 16. Now I can barely recall y=mx+b. This is not good.

45 minutes expired and I had answered all but 2 of the 28 questions. I won’t tell you how many I got wrong, but let’s just say my score was less than perfect.

The verbal section lasted 30 minutes, and consisted of 30 unique oh-damn-I-should-really-know-this questions. It included words you thought you’d heard before, verbal relationships that seemed ambiguous at best, and reading comprehension questions that asked for far more than you really wanted to give.

Joe was right. The practice tests definitely taught us something. They taught us that we need to stop slackin’ and get crackin.’ I can’t wait to bust out some dusty trigonometry books and re-memorize some good ol’ triangle equations.

On a brighter note, I learned an awesome new GRE vocab word: antistrophe.

Antistrophe is “the inversion of terms in successive classes, as in “the home of joy” and the “joy of home.”

That is, the beginning is a long road, and a long road is only the beginning.

Now all I need to do is study. This is easier said than done. Though I consider myself to be extremely self-motivated and reasonably competent, life has too many distractions. For starters, I am a blog manager for a national nonprofit campaign, an executive director for a nonprofit media justice organization, a freelance web designer who dabbles in code, a new media strategist for various projects and campaigns, and an independent contractor in the world of fine art. Now I want to add grad school to my ever expanding to-do list. Call me ambitious or call me insane; I think either classification would be accurate.

For the past few years, I have attempted to study for the GRE. This usually results in two days of studying followed by two months of feeling guilty about not studying, followed by a non-binding personal agreement to study next year. Well now I’m committed, dammit. I paid for my test, and I AM going to take  the GRE on July 1st, 2010.

But taking the test isn’t the hard part. Studying is a far more challenging endeavor. I looked into some GRE courses with the hopes that a class would give me some form of structure. Then I decided to stick with the DIY study plan when I saw (1) the price tag, and (2) the reviews.

The courses aren’t cheap. The ones I found cost around 1,200 bucks. Even with my 27 jobs*, I’m still the type of gal who needs to reduce her gas bill by wearing multiple sweaters and making the cat serve as a personal heating device. (We’re talking radiant warmth here, people. He eats, he breathes, he sits next to me while I shiver and he graciously absorbs my coldness). Paying $120 per hour for a personal GRE tutor just isn’t an option.

* rough approximation or slight exaggeration, you call it

Online reviews also verify that the courses aren’t worth it. Check out this gem of advice I found: “GRE courses are designed for low-scorers who have poor study habits. If you don’t know how to study, you probably shouldn’t be going to grad school anyway.” Ouch. Okay, whatever you say All-Mighty Web Commenters. They’re probably right. I need to develop some serious study habits if I want to do well on the GRE.

So here’s the plan: I’m going to study for at least one hour every day for the next four months. Some say that the best way to learn is to teach, so I will also be teaching study information to GRE enthusiasts and innocent bystanders who happen to discover my ramblings while wandering in the 500-some-odd-million blog pit that is the blogosphere.

We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck.