GMAT

Now I’m worried. Last night I took a practice test from the GMAT people themselves. I didn’t take my time on it and kind of pushed things a bit, but still I did try my best (I had lots of time left so I know I didn’t spend enough time trying to do things) and to say I did poorly was an understatement. If that was my score, no MBA program for me. And I only have tonight, tomorrow and Sunday to study up and be prepared for Monday afternoon. I should almost take Monday morning off too, but as of right now I’m planning to work half a day, trying to do as little looking at the computer and getting eye strain and tired from it before the test as I can. I went to the library at lunch today and checked out Algebra II for Dummies as well as a few other text books and things…I should’ve done that a lot sooner. Anyway, the reading and other things were just as bad as my math last night too, and that’s the part that is supposed to be bringing my score up…sigh…no idea what is going to happen on Monday. All I know is I need about 100 points more than I got on the practice one last night…Have I mentioned how much I hate math? All those times we were told “you’ll use this in your life”…ummm….yeah…I did do well in high school (and college) algebra. I understood it, but obviously I haven’t used it in real life or I would still remember how to do it! When I see a problem like this:

x + 1 - x + 2 = 0
x – 3 x - 4

and it’s asking for the value of x, I tend to freak sometimes…OK, that one isn’t super hard, but it’s also not easy and it’s not something I see everyday so how should I remember how to do something like that! Of course the stupid book is telling me “those who approach the GMAT as an obstacle and who rail against the necessity of taking it usually don’t fare as well as those who see the GMAT as an opportunity. Those who look forward to doing battle with the GMAT are insane (OK, it doesn’t say that, but you know), or, at least, who enjoy the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the rest of the applicant pack, tend to score better.

I know I have to take it, I’m not railing against it, I just see where it has opportunity for being done differently as I’m not in a field that uses math, business math isn’t algebra, (or geometry) and I don’t use math on my job in any sense of the word anyway…and standardized tests (and I tend toward doing well on them) are not a good test of how someone is going to do in college anyway, why is this torture done?? Sigh…

So my weekend will consist of studying, studying and more studying, with a 25K on Sunday.