The GRE, a New Type of Torture

The Graduate Record Examination was officially terrible. Literally painful.

Upon entering the test building, you must rewrite their entire confidentiality statement in cursive. Twice verbally, they made sure that I knew the difference between cursive and print, and it was additionally written in bold on my form. Yes sir, I'm taking this test to gain admission to graduate school, but I'll be honest, I'm rather unsure of how to connect all 'them letters to one another, you know, squiggly & fancy-like. But while I'm thinking of it, I would like you to tell me where my cubby is located and most importantly, what time do we get snacks?

After completing the confidentiality agreement, you are told to wait by the door, where they snap your picture when you enter and leave (Sidenote! Just like they do in prison! Coincidence?) then you are led to a small booth, a few feet wide, with a computer. A camera is posited directly above your head, like that creepy eye in Lord of the Rings. Then you sit at that computer for three to four hours, and every time you look away because your eyes hurt terribly from staring at the computer, the proctor comes shuffling over to you, having seen you look away on his creeper monitor. I can tell that this man dreams nightly of catching a real, live cheater just by looking at him, with his definitely too-small sickly pink shirt, buttoned to the tip-top, sans tie, his unpressed khaki pants, and his white sneakers. His job isn't real exciting, I'll give him that, but c'mon man, pull yourself together.

Over the course of the exam, I tried looking to the side, up, down, and behind me but to no relief. The computer was still there out of the corner of my eye, burning holes in my retinas. You know when you're little, and you're told not to look directly at the solar eclipse? I bet it feels something like this computer screen did.

I finished an hour early, guessed on a great deal of it, and quite honestly, have no idea how I managed to get a decent score. It's high enough for the school I'm going into, so today? Today I'm going to sit here in bed, in Eric's old pajamas, with a large Earl Grey latte, watch the foot of snow we're expecting to accumulate, and allow my brain to turn to mush.

I think that I owe it that much.

20010

I've seen quite a few people write 20010 in the past two weeks, and I like that kind of forward thinking, so that's the name of my first blog this year.

About a week ago, I had the overwhelming desire to blog again. This coincided with my final semester of college starting and an overwhelming desire to sleep too, so I'm just getting around to it today. I'm graduating from college in exactly 116 days, at which point I will work for a summer and then begin graduate school in a Marriage and Family counseling program at one of two schools here in Nashville.

All of this is terrifying to me.

As ignorant as it sounds, I guess it has only hit me in the past say, 4 months or so that when I move out, I am on my own. On. My. Own. For so long, Eric and I had a plan (truly laughable how rarely those work out) that we'd be engaged Fall 2009, married late Fall 2010, and I'd only have to figure out how to make it by myself for a few months, and then I'd happily settle into domestic bliss, baking a lot, working on my graduate degree and working to somewhat support the gross income of the household, while Eric did a great majority of the bringin' of the bacon.

Alas, a epiphany sometime in early fall of last year made me rethink The Plan. Not so much if I should be with Eric but rather if I need to have this time on my own, to be sure that I'm not marrying Eric too soon just for security and, well, for the assured fruition of my goals. (I have no issues saying I can't wait to be a wife and a mom. I want at least four kids. The fifth is negotiable but preferred.)

I came to the conclusion that its amazing how completely and totally devoted one can be to the idea of something, and even without any massive events occurring, those thoughts are also simultaneously, so incredibly transient.

That didn't make sense. Allow me to try again. Eric and I have more or less been together since I was fifteen. If, from the approximate age of 18 through 20, he asked me to run away with him to Vegas' Say-I-Do Drive-Thru, it probably would have taken about 11 minutes of solid convincing, and possibly a pro/con list, the cons technically outweighing the pro side, which would have consisted of the single phrase TRUE LOVE!! written with lots of loopy letters and hearts dotting the exclamation marks, and then we'd be off. There was absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that he was the perfect one, that he was it and nothing could change my mind. Strangely though, the only things that have changed my mind from that rather utopian ideal are not giant cataclysmic events, but rather just 1) Me. and 2) Time.

Now, while I suppose the overarching theme of Melissa-and-Eric-Together-Forever hasn't changed, I'm totally okay with it slowing. I think that as hard as it is not to have that safety net of having another to go out and battle the big scary world with, I need this time, I need the availability of flexibility to go back to New Zealand for a year if I so desire. (rather specific, yes, I'm aware). Also, my time abroad showed me that the world isn't so scary. I think I can handle it, at least for a little while. Again, nothing huge happened but time, and my thoughts are so radically different on the subject than they were 2 years ago. To me, this screams, wait 2 MORE years, and just see where you'll be!!

I am a strange blend of competitive ("She 's got a ring Eric. She's got a 2.3 carat Tacori ring from their 2009 Dantela Collection. Why does everyone ELSE get to have rings!!?") and so people-pleasing that I regularly have near panic attacks when I realize that I've done something wrong at work, at school, or at home ("Oh my goodness, I just realized I showed up a FULL HOUR late to work because I'm 21 years old and can't figure out how to read a friggin' calendar properly!")

As a side note, events (yes, plural) like these make me think the people I work for simply MUST think I'm a complete idiot. They've got to. I feel an overwhelming urge when I say or do something stupid like this to shout out, "BUT I'M ON THE DEAN'S LIST AT SCHOOL!!" I'll be telling a story or saying something completely irrelevant to the conversation, and as I'm saying it I know that I should stop because it won't make sense out loud, and yet here comes the crazy part, I SAY IT ANYWAY.

I digress.

Long story short, I'm a different person than I was before Australia. I'm capable and I'm still scared witless about life after May 15th, 2010, but I think I'll be better off forcing this independence now than in 30 years. After all, I've learned that plans quite often don't come anywhere close to completion so... they can't be trusted.

This turned out to be so much longer than I wanted it to be, but I'm making up for a full year of not writing, and thus far, its been quite therapeutic.