{"id":5251,"date":"2013-04-17T16:37:14","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T20:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/?p=5251"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:41:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:41:59","slug":"i-feel-the-earth-move-under-my-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/i-feel-the-earth-move-under-my-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many a true word is said in jest.\u009d—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.<\/p>\n

\"greI moved to Los Angeles, to a little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, the day before the Northridge earthquake.\u00a0 Timing is everything, just like on the GRE.\u00a0 I woke up around 3 in the morning.\u00a0 Because the bungalow was jumping up and down.\u00a0 As a stupid easterner, I thought, Oh, it’s an earthquake.\u00a0 They have them here.\u009d\u00a0 I didn’t know it was The Medium One.\u009d\u00a0 (It was amazing to see the damage—piles of rubble on Ventura Boulevard and in Hollywood, and the I-10 ramp to the 405 fell down.)\u00a0 As long as I was awake, I decided to go to the bathroom.\u00a0 The first big aftershock threw me into the door frame.\u00a0 It’s unsettling not to have a firm foundation under your feet.\u00a0 You feel out of control and at the mercy of forces larger than you.<\/p>\n

And that’s the way students feel about the GRE.\u00a0 And for the same reason, metaphorically speaking.\u00a0 In every GRE class I’ve taught, most of the students were bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the shakiness of their foundation knowledge.\u00a0 The ground was not firm beneath their feet.\u00a0 It paralyzed them.\u00a0 They understood the concepts of the problems and the relevant strategies to employ, but could not then solve the problems in a timely manner, if at all.\u00a0 Especially on the quant side, the GRE tests a logic system—be precise, don’t assume, pick the choice that must follow.\u00a0 The arithmetic and algebra are the moral equivalent of reading English.\u00a0 You would like to be able to take those skills as much for granted as you do reading words.\u00a0 When I say 7 times 13, you say 91.\u00a0 Think of it as a rap.\u00a0 When you see .625, you say 5\/8.\u00a0 Woot.\u00a0 All seriousness aside, people waste 30 seconds a question in the quant because they don’t know their times tables or squares or the fractional decimal percentage equivalencies.\u00a0 Or their algebra isn’t smooth and silky.\u00a0 Think about how much time that uses up during the section.\u00a0 How do you fix that?\u00a0 How do you get to Carnegie Hall?\u009d\u00a0 Practice, practice, practice.\u009d\u00a0 That’s a New York joke—LA classes hate it.\u00a0 Having that mastery frees you to identify the type, the approach, and the traps—to do what has to be done to score well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It truly pains me to see students who have the capacity to excel crippled because they lack that fluency and facility.\u00a0 And this is the tough love part of the evening.\u00a0 People have to not kid themselves about what they want the most. \u00a0Youse guys can do it.\u00a0 You have to want it enough to do the work that you need to do.\u00a0 I had an acting coach who said, You can have anything you want if you’re willing to sacrifice everything for it.\u009d\u00a0 Hear the second part.\u00a0 When I was a young I considered going expat in Paris, even though I was decades too late, but, never mind.\u00a0 I didn’t go because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice things that I ultimately considered more important.\u00a0 It wasn’t a failure; it was a choice.\u00a0 It’s the same with y’all.\u00a0 If you don’t want to put in the time and effort that it would take you to score brilliantly, it’s not a failure—it’s a choice.\u00a0 Maybe even the right choice.\u00a0 Just don’t kid yourself.\u00a0 The older I get, the more respect I have for what is.\u009d\u00a0 If you want most to max out on this exam, do the amount of foundation work that you need.\u00a0 I have worked with folks who started from zero and went to the best programs in their fields.\u00a0 They worked real hard for as long as it took, and I admired their dedication.\u00a0 Do the work.\u00a0 You can.\u00a0 I am trying to be encouraging here, but I was raised by Germans, and it’s not part of the culture of my people.<\/p>\n

Where did everybody go?\u00a0 What did I say?\u00a0 Just kidding. . .I hope.\u00a0 Some people feel that they don’t have time to do the foundation work and meet their deadlines.\u00a0 It’s a bad, even self-defeating, excuse.\u00a0 Of course I don’t know you—perhaps you have several husbands and many children to support.\u00a0 But deadlines are artificial.\u00a0 I don’t want to sound like your grandfather, but in twenty years you’ll barely remember when you started grad school.\u00a0 I know you don’t believe me, but I went through undergrad at a top school in three years.\u00a0 And now it means nothing to me.\u00a0 Just sayin’.\u00a0 Also, quite frankly, waiting a year usually improves your application because you garner not only higher GRE scores, but also more accomplishments.\u00a0 Or go to Paris and paint—you’ll always be glad that you did.<\/p>\n

People generally associate foundation work with the math, but there also such work in the verbal.\u00a0 When I’m being mean to students, I say, You know what the secret to Sentence Completion and Sentence Equivalence is?\u00a0 It’s a lot harder if you don’t know what the words mean.\u009d\u00a0 Bring the same rigor to the verbal that you do to the math.\u00a0 Notice the parallel—-you know the strategy guide approach to sentence completions but vocabulary issues handicap you, just as you know the rate formula but cracks in your quant foundation hamstring you.\u00a0 Be willing to make vocab flash cards and use the words—at least in your inner monologues if you are too embarrassed to do so in Facebook posts.\u00a0 (But let me point out the upside, if your friends all think you’ve become a pompous twit, you will have more time to study.\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 Sort of.\u00a0 After all, you can always make more friends, but there’s only one Maltese Falcon.\u00a0 It’s a movie joke, don’t mind me.)<\/p>\n

Do you want to do more?\u00a0 It’s a choice.\u00a0 Read literature—many novels written before the second world war feature now obscure words that the GRE fancies.*\u00a0 I can hear you sputtering in outrage about this fact of life, but remember that what is\u009d thang I wrote about early.\u00a0 Try Somerset Maugham if you want to ease in.\u00a0 If you’re up for it, try DH Lawrence, Thomas Wolfe, or William Faulkner.\u00a0 Even Evelyn Waugh\u201dwhom you might find more amusing.<\/p>\n

There is a reward.\u00a0 As I said, if your quant and vocabulary foundations are solid, then you are free to devote yourself to the approaches, form, and awareness delineated in the strategy guides.\u00a0 Then you can gain the mastery and control necessary to max out this exam—-but the mastery and control I speak of is akin to that displayed by Olympic gymnasts and concert pianists.\u00a0 When I was young and pretty, I went to a method acting school in Manhattan.\u00a0 These guys were hard core, as I’m trying to be here.\u00a0 A quote carved over the front door read, I wish the stage were as narrow as a tight rope, so incompetents would fear to trade on it.\u009d\u00a0 The GRE is a tight rope and requires the same commitment to form and precision.\u00a0 And the same rock solid foundation.\u00a0 So do that preparation and don’t kid yourself about it—as Jimi Hendrix used to say, Castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.\u009d\u00a0 Especially during earthquakes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*I tried off and on to use some annoying GRE type words but fancies\u009d is a classic example.\u00a0 To fancy\u009d can mean to like.\u009d\u00a0 You see it a lot. . .in one hundred year old books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many a true word is said in jest.\u009d—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother. I moved to Los Angeles, to a little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, the day before the Northridge earthquake.\u00a0 Timing is everything, just like on the GRE.\u00a0 I woke up around 3 in the morning.\u00a0 Because the bungalow was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-how-to-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6938,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions\/6938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5251"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}