wo days ago I took a practice GRE test. On verbal, I got a 93 percentile, which is not bad. On math, I got a 4.
"Four percentile?" my boyfriend said. "How did you get a four percentile?"
I don't know.
"Did you check C for every question?"
No, I actually tried. What's funny is that even though it's been about 10 years since I had a math class, I thought I could remember it all somehow. So when I came across questions about the length of a hypotenuse, or the angle of yadda-yadda, or the 10-question series about square footage in a house, I was plugging away with my best-guess formula, invented for all I know, and thinking, "Wow. I'm ,really good. I'm some kind of math prodigy. Like this stuff runs in my blood."
Fortunately for me, neither my GRE nor my Quantitative score is crucial to my acceptance. (I'm applying for creative writing school. They're more concerned about the little matter of 30 pages of original work, which Jesus don't get me started.) But 4 percentile? I do have pride. I'm throwing down the gauntlet. I'm gonna break 10.