To get it out of the way
Jun. 13th, 2011 01:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenFirst and foremost, I must thank everyone who wished me luck on my GRE. I'm sorry I didn't respond to all of you. Would that your prayers had been better bestowed on a better candidate to achieve them.
I did not perform very well on the test. I got well below the average I was achieving on the practice tests. The score is satisfactory, to an outside point of view, but I know how much worse I did than I could have done, and it both angers and saddens me. I choked on the math, too, and although I lost five times fewer points on it than I did on the verbal, it meant my score just bottomed out almost as completely as it could have done. I'm extremely disappointed in myself. There's no two ways about it.
Nevertheless, at this point, I do not think I will retake it. If I took it next month, the last month I can take it and guarantee scores for my application deadlines, it would put off my entire application by that entire month. It's not worth losing the advantage of the early application submission to all the schools to retake it. There is definitely a benefit to applying early, and with my less-than-stellar application, I need all the help i can get. Why jeopardize that for what might not be a better score at all? Damn it, I needed the good score to make up for the holes in my application. It wouldn't have been much, but it would have been one thing I could have pointed to and had taken care of. Damn it all. I should have done better and now I won't have the chance.
However, I will put off a final decision on retesting until I double-check the class statistics at the places to which I am applying and what their policy is on multiple GRE scores. These schools have this maddening inability to decide on ONE way to receive multiple scores, so each one does any of four different possible things with the scores:
1) Average them (making taking a retest assuredly not worth another $160)
2) Take the best of the total scores (slightly more worth it since there's so much room between my score and perfection)
3) Take the best score on each individual part (very worth retaking the test, especially if I can bring up the verbal)
4) ??? (Some of them don't say, isn't that helpful?)
If the majority of schools I'm applying to fall into categories #2 and #3, I will consider retesting in July if their averages/percentile ranges are dangerously close to my score (say within 100 points of mine for the average).
There's just not much I can do, which depresses me all the more than the worse-than-I'm-capable-of score. I really left this later in the year so I'd have the time to study. I don't know that I studied well enough, and that's my fault, but even on what I studied and how, I should have done better. If the probable happens and I don't get into school next year, I will retake the GRE, the new test, of which I got the briefest of previews in the experimental section this weekend. I think I might be able to do that better, which is the real tragedy here: were grad school applications not due in October, I could have taken the revised version.
I still haven't gotten my writing scores. I'm completely unsure of those, but most schools don't need them. For the ones that do, I need at least a 4.5 average, and if I could get a 5, I'd be much more satisfied overall. Their grading rubric for the essays still mystifies me, so I'm not certain at all what score I got. I have to have hope--without a better test score, that's all I have.
I hope all of this emo is sturm and drang over nothing. I should be so lucky. We shall see, I suppose. The next step is to prepare the general application and then start to work on all of the side applications. If I really apply myself, I could have these done by the end of the month. Time is now ever more of the essence, so I hope, for once, I will be able to avoid procrastinating.
I did, however, get out to see X-Men: First Class, which? Not half so bad as I feared. Possibly, even good. I grind my teeth continually at January Jones as Emma fucking Frost, and I cannot believe for a second that the film, whatever its intentions, convinced anyone that Magneto wasn't, in just about all things, including his fundamental philosophy, entirely fucking correct. This is supposed to be a film about the birth of the X-Men, and it reads like a recruitment film for the Brotherhood of Mutants. It doesn't help that Michael Fassbender is given nothing but awesome things to do and a wonderfully complex character to work with besides and the best James McAvoy gets is...hair? The chance to both sanctimonious and utterly depraved?
Whatever, Magneto was totally the hero of the film. I enjoyed seeing a young Mystique start to come into her own, though. Up until the travesty that was X-Men: Fuck You, Bryan Singer, she was easily the most fabulously rendered character in the X-Men films. For all that I adore Sir Ian McKellen's gleeful portrayal of Magento in the Singer X-Men movies, Mystique was not only a great character design, she was one of the only characters whose powers, though not broken in how overpowered they were, were used to the best effect. Every Mystique moment is a good one, even when it's kind of icky, like her hitting on Wolverine by asking him if he's hot for Stryker (WHILE LOOKING LIKE BRIAN COX WHHHYYY??). I loved her character moments, the makeup, the way she morphed between forms, and yes, I goddamned loved that she was nude. (I'm sure I wasn't the only one.) Makes more sense than her being able to change her clothes along with her body, which, regrettably, she was doing in X-Men: First Class.
You have her character and Fassbender's mutant Jewish James Bond, and, jeeze, of course I side with them. How could I not?
I did not perform very well on the test. I got well below the average I was achieving on the practice tests. The score is satisfactory, to an outside point of view, but I know how much worse I did than I could have done, and it both angers and saddens me. I choked on the math, too, and although I lost five times fewer points on it than I did on the verbal, it meant my score just bottomed out almost as completely as it could have done. I'm extremely disappointed in myself. There's no two ways about it.
Nevertheless, at this point, I do not think I will retake it. If I took it next month, the last month I can take it and guarantee scores for my application deadlines, it would put off my entire application by that entire month. It's not worth losing the advantage of the early application submission to all the schools to retake it. There is definitely a benefit to applying early, and with my less-than-stellar application, I need all the help i can get. Why jeopardize that for what might not be a better score at all? Damn it, I needed the good score to make up for the holes in my application. It wouldn't have been much, but it would have been one thing I could have pointed to and had taken care of. Damn it all. I should have done better and now I won't have the chance.
However, I will put off a final decision on retesting until I double-check the class statistics at the places to which I am applying and what their policy is on multiple GRE scores. These schools have this maddening inability to decide on ONE way to receive multiple scores, so each one does any of four different possible things with the scores:
1) Average them (making taking a retest assuredly not worth another $160)
2) Take the best of the total scores (slightly more worth it since there's so much room between my score and perfection)
3) Take the best score on each individual part (very worth retaking the test, especially if I can bring up the verbal)
4) ??? (Some of them don't say, isn't that helpful?)
If the majority of schools I'm applying to fall into categories #2 and #3, I will consider retesting in July if their averages/percentile ranges are dangerously close to my score (say within 100 points of mine for the average).
There's just not much I can do, which depresses me all the more than the worse-than-I'm-capable-of score. I really left this later in the year so I'd have the time to study. I don't know that I studied well enough, and that's my fault, but even on what I studied and how, I should have done better. If the probable happens and I don't get into school next year, I will retake the GRE, the new test, of which I got the briefest of previews in the experimental section this weekend. I think I might be able to do that better, which is the real tragedy here: were grad school applications not due in October, I could have taken the revised version.
I still haven't gotten my writing scores. I'm completely unsure of those, but most schools don't need them. For the ones that do, I need at least a 4.5 average, and if I could get a 5, I'd be much more satisfied overall. Their grading rubric for the essays still mystifies me, so I'm not certain at all what score I got. I have to have hope--without a better test score, that's all I have.
I hope all of this emo is sturm and drang over nothing. I should be so lucky. We shall see, I suppose. The next step is to prepare the general application and then start to work on all of the side applications. If I really apply myself, I could have these done by the end of the month. Time is now ever more of the essence, so I hope, for once, I will be able to avoid procrastinating.
I did, however, get out to see X-Men: First Class, which? Not half so bad as I feared. Possibly, even good. I grind my teeth continually at January Jones as Emma fucking Frost, and I cannot believe for a second that the film, whatever its intentions, convinced anyone that Magneto wasn't, in just about all things, including his fundamental philosophy, entirely fucking correct. This is supposed to be a film about the birth of the X-Men, and it reads like a recruitment film for the Brotherhood of Mutants. It doesn't help that Michael Fassbender is given nothing but awesome things to do and a wonderfully complex character to work with besides and the best James McAvoy gets is...hair? The chance to both sanctimonious and utterly depraved?
Whatever, Magneto was totally the hero of the film. I enjoyed seeing a young Mystique start to come into her own, though. Up until the travesty that was X-Men: Fuck You, Bryan Singer, she was easily the most fabulously rendered character in the X-Men films. For all that I adore Sir Ian McKellen's gleeful portrayal of Magento in the Singer X-Men movies, Mystique was not only a great character design, she was one of the only characters whose powers, though not broken in how overpowered they were, were used to the best effect. Every Mystique moment is a good one, even when it's kind of icky, like her hitting on Wolverine by asking him if he's hot for Stryker (WHILE LOOKING LIKE BRIAN COX WHHHYYY??). I loved her character moments, the makeup, the way she morphed between forms, and yes, I goddamned loved that she was nude. (I'm sure I wasn't the only one.) Makes more sense than her being able to change her clothes along with her body, which, regrettably, she was doing in X-Men: First Class.
You have her character and Fassbender's mutant Jewish James Bond, and, jeeze, of course I side with them. How could I not?
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 01:23 pm (UTC)And yes, from this movie, Magneto's entirely correct. Also so awesome OMG. And fills out a button-down short sleeve shirt very nicely. Xavier, on the other hand, is kinda delusional and sleezy. He's clearly got a lot of growing up to do.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 02:06 pm (UTC)That's pretty weak sauce against a man who has lived a life that proves what a lack of privilege will do to people who are different and whose philosophy is proved correct in the film itself. Magneto says, "They're going to kill us," and the humans promptly try to kill them. Xavier's way not only seems like a luxury most mutants won't have, but, in light of the ending, a delusion.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 02:07 pm (UTC)Did you enjoy Hugh Jackman's cameo? I laughed so hard.
I'm sorry your test didn't go how you wanted. :( The writing section is graded stupidly, is what. When I was grading essays it was near to impossible to do it fairly.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 02:36 pm (UTC)Hugh Jackman's cameo I actually had spoiled, but I actually loved it because his response shocked me enough. I also appreciated Rebecca Romjin's cameo, if only because adult Mystique is, like, my favorite thing from the other X-Men movies.
Tests suck, man.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 01:26 am (UTC)I concur Mystique was the best thing about the movies, and I love how First Class deftly shows her character development from passing for normal to her memorable "I shouldn't have to" from the second movie. Bravo.
You know what makes me mad? The frat boys in front of me during the movie kept calling Jennifer Lawrence fat. WHOA?
Xavier came across as an over-privileged tool.
I could not get past the racial/gender politics. As I griped on Twitter, Emma Frost would not fetch ice. The black guy dies first, is the ONLY one to bite it, and the black/Latina stripper is the first to defect? And for no good reason?
NO FEMALE remains with the X-men in the conclusion - not that I fault them. WHY stick with Xavier? I could not help but notice it is ONLY the white males who are loyal to Team X - and yes, I consider Hank McCoy "white". Until he brought upon his accelerated mutation upon himself, he had white male privilege.
The Brotherhood consists of people who would be discrimination targets in modern society WITHOUT their mutations - people of color, Jewish, female. How could the screenwriters and casting NOT notice this?
And why does Havok use naked female mannequins for target practice?!!
This being said, the first half of the movie was AWESOME. And the recruitment scene with Wolverine was hysterical.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 03:46 am (UTC)I LOVE that line. Mystique is just so relentlessly bad-ass, and the way she delivers that line is capital P priceless. As for Jennifer Lawerence being "fat," fuck those guys. Granted, the Mystique makeup was not as good in this movie as in the others, but that hardly made her look fat. Those guys should be nut-punched.
The Brotherhood consists of people who would be discrimination targets in modern society WITHOUT their mutations - people of color, Jewish, female. How could the screenwriters and casting NOT notice this?
That is a damned good question. Because everyone in our group noticed. And plenty of the other people in the theater did, too.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 11:28 pm (UTC)X-Men: First Class was decidedly better than I hoped for. I also went to see Super 8 yesterday, and it was amusing how much like a 70's film it looked... except for the alien itself. :p
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 01:17 am (UTC)I <3 my neighborhood. I thought for sure that I'd never see a cheap movie ticket again. Granted, it's no megaplex, but for $5 matinee or $7.50 evenings and right around the corner, I'll take it.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-17 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-17 02:18 pm (UTC)