(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

The good news is that my GRE scores FINALLY FREAKING ARRIVED. (Remember: I took them at the end of August. Ugh, ugh, ugh -- they changed the test and the scoring system, which is why it took so long, I guess.) The bad news is that I did not do quite as well as I was hoping for -- I did worse than my dad did when he took them twenty years ago. On the other hand, I like to think that it's harder now than it was back in the day. The good news is that I still did pretty good, at least if you don't look at my Quantitative Reasoning scores. My Analytical Writing scores are in the 96th percentile, anyway.

...I guess I should get around to applying to graduate school. Wow, if only I knew what I wanted to study. (Hint: I...kind of don't. And I'm back to feeling really freaking unqualified.)

Comments

[cursor_mundi]

Keep in mind, too, that fewer people were taking the test 20 years ago, and it depends ENTIRELY on who takes the same test that you take, etc. It's all a stats game, and as my father (the statistician) always says, "I can prove, statistically, that the sky is green -- don't take this to heart." But I hear you: I'm the black sheep of the family, going for literature. All the rest are organic chem and engineering or mathematics or physiology. :/ (Result: family dinners are damn near incomprehensible to outsiders, I think!)

And, looking at the comments downthread, I'm just going to say that the few people I know who went into grad school straight out from undergrad are still there (remember: BA in 2002!), with no exit strategy in the immediate future, and they're totally burned out; those of us who waited a few years are out or almost out, and have career goals. The skills you learn while working a job that you know isn't your vocation make the vocation that much more enriching, truly. *hugs*

[bedlamsbard]

I am just glad that I have by now figured out that the last thing I want to do is take career advice from my dad. Which is to say -- yes, he works at a university, and he enjoys what he does (he teaches ESL), or at least I assume he does, since he's been doing it for the past twenty years. On the other hand, I think he's still sad that I didn't go to college and do something practical like become a geologist. On the third hand, he is the reason that I have no interest in ever teaching ESL.

The thing I worry about if I take a year off is that I am basically unemployable -- like, I've never had a job, unless you count two months of work-study in social media, and I'm a lib arts major. And I live in a small town with a university, so there's already competition for that kind of job between the high school students and the university students and the locals who didn't go to uni. So...I worry. *sigh*

[cursor_mundi]

Hey, I took a double major English / Italian degree, and in the 2002 -- a really shitty year to graduate, thanks to the crash caused by 9 /11 -- I ended up with a Federal government job that hired me because of my grades and majors. For serious, there are lots of options. Make Tulane's Career Center work for you!

[bedlamsbard]

Hmm. Yeah, there is Hire Tulane to think about...