You know…at this point, there isn’t much studying I can do that would have a big effect on my GRE performance tomorrow. Not that that helps, because I’ve had such a hard time motivating myself to study all evening, and while I feel really confident about the math, there are several sections of the verbal portion that I know are going to slaughter me–namely antonyms, analogies, and reading comprehension (geez, I could get through Saussure and Wittgenstein and Derrida just a few years ago, but I can’t answer simple questions on simple passages in a standardized test now).
A couple of things bother me on principle: I pride myself on having a pretty good vocabulary (it probably comes from being one of those hard-core spelling bee geeks in elementary and middle school, and I still get really excited about the yearly broadcast of the Scripps(-Howard?) National Spelling Bee on ESPN), so it’s humbling that I’ve never encountered or just don’t know quite a few of these words (I’m also learning that the meanings of many words are noticeably different than what I’d always assumed they were–“prodigal” was the big shocker; it means wasteful. Wasteful!). It also bothers me that in my years of reading these texts on media theory and reading the work of these major media and representational theorists, as well as more traditional literature, these words were virtually never in their writings. All this work for something I won’t end up using afterwards…bah. ;o)
I wish I could go for a run or something, except that it’s rainy and chilly.
Oh, so they delivered the December CLAIR Japanese correspondence test today–too bad I haven’t even begun working on the November one yet. Heh, oops…I’d better get on that next week. I’m glad I chose the intermediate level to refresh what I’d already learned.
So anyway, tomorrow consists of this:
0700-1050 – bus ride from Ikeda to Osaka
1050-1215 – wander around Umeda, try to scope out some stores to buy gifts from later, eat lunch, remind myself where the Hankyu Entertainment Plex/Plaza is so that I can raid their Starbucks
1215 – head 1 stop north to Nakatsu to find the testing center
1300-1700 – GRE (dun-dun-duhhhnnn…)
1700-1915 – wander around Umeda in a dazed, zombielike state and hopefully buy pretty Japanese stuff
1930-? – bus ride back home
Yay for 12 hours of sitting. Good grief. And all that traveling in one day, too…I’ll be sleeping well tomorrow night, for sure!
Sunday’s going to be fairly busy as well–the Tokushima JETs put on a musical every year, with this year’s theme being Peter Pan, and Joe’s arranging a meeting for it on Sunday afternoon, so I’d like to head into the city to do some shopping beforehand. (I definitely want to volunteer to help out with doing any visual work that needs to be done (programmes, sets), and it would be a lot of fun to actually be on stage as well…) After I come back home, Julie in Mikamo is coming over that evening for her introductory violin lesson! She’d approached me about it a few weeks ago. I’ve never actually taught violin before–I’m really excited about this, and so is she.
All right, so for tomorrow, I need to remember these things:
- passport!
- bus tickets
- money
- Prometric testing info
- CD player, CDs, batteries (gotta do something on the bus besides study and sleep…)
- camera, just in case
Okay, I should at least browse through some more of the “essential vocabulary” and jot down some notes to study while on the bus tomorrow, as well as get my stuff together and figure out what to wear. Wish me luck! I’m already planning on taking it again when I’m with my family in Osaka in December, but it would be nice to just get it out of the way in one shot.