GRE panic........and calm.....

I took the GRE last night. And I bombed it.

Actually, it was a practice GRE, the third practice GRE I had done, and the first one I tried while timed.

I hated that little clock on the screen. It ticked like a time bomb and shattered my belief in myself. I scored horribly low on that practice test. After staring at the computer screen in shock, I started to cry. Hard. Then I got to my knees and started to pray. Hard. The tears didn't stop, they just came faster.

Please, Heavenly Father, I can't fail.

I know the taste of failure. It has happened so many times. My whole grad school future hinges on being able to score well on the GRE. I prayed and cried, cried and prayed.

Mr. Wonderful heard about it late last night after the kids were in bed. He heard me out, let me cry on his shoulder, counseled me, and promised to give me a priesthood blessing the next morning.

This morning, before the kids were up, Mr. Wonderful gave me a blessing in which he reminded me whose daughter I was and blessed me to have a calm spirit and clear recall of the things I studied.

I felt calm. I was so calm during my morning class that my classmates wondered what was wrong with me. Usually I am talkative - not this morning. I breezed through a quiz I had in class this morning, then left to review for the GRE.

This afternoon, I entered the testing center still feeling calm. I filled out the paperwork, hand copied the paragraph stating that I would not cheat, showed I.D., and stowed all my belongings in a locker - including a watch they told me I couldn't wear. They even made me turn my pockets inside out. All I could take in were two pencils and four sheets of yellow paper.

I walked in calmly. My hands weren't even shaking.

Noise reduction headphones - on.

Place paper, pencils, and I.D. just so,

Scroll through the directions.

Deep breath and quick stretch.

Go.

I think I rocked the essays. The quantitative was stressful. The problems I could not figure out in 2 minutes, I did a best guess of elimination and moved on. At least I finished the section with 2 seconds to spare. During the verbal, there were only two words I did not know but I could break them down and make a guess between two of the five answers available.

I did better on the quant than I thought I would but not great. I wasn't sure if I did well on the verbal until I looked up the percentage. According to the ETS website (if I understood it correctly) I did very well on the verbal.

I need to talk to my counselor to see if my scores were good enough for grad school, or should I take it again and hope for better on the math. I won't have my full scores with essays for two weeks.

Overall, I feel pretty good. Calm. Really calm.

Hopefully that feeling will last all through Thanksgiving break.