winter is a season of loafing and dormancy whereas spring is a season of action and new beginnings…

this past saturday i took the first of four GRE prep/strategy courses in an effort to jump start my graduate school aspirations. i have realized after twenty seven years on this earth that i am a person who needs structure in order to be relatively ambitious. if i study on my own, i am dooming myself to failure. smart cindy, very smart. took you long enough to figure that one out.

however, in the first half of class where our instructor kind of gave us some stats and his personal opinions of the GRE, i came across some food for thought that i’d like to share and i’d be interested to hear what your thoughts may be on it.

our instructor, mark wahl (a math teaching specialist), argued that the GRE is a male-oriented test. meaning that men on average do better on the GREs than their female counterparts. his reasons were threefold:

1) men tend to be risk takers, which seem to pay off handsomely in a test such as the GRE when there is plenty of risk involved and one is rewarded for taking these risks;

2) men also respond much better to timed challenges- in research when the GRE was given without any time constraints, females usually scored much better; and

3) men think in black and white whereas women think in shades of gray, apparently the GRE is more the former than the latter.

upon learning these three pieces of information, i immediately delved into meditations on the following:

1) i’m going to do better on this damn test than any of the boys i know

2) okay if i don’t, then i have my excuse

3) in addition to the previous fury i was already experiencing having to take a standardized test (which i happen to suck at, if it weren’t the case, this post would not exist), this knowledge made me feel even more like whining and spouting that old adage… it isn’t fair!

i know, life isn’t meant to be fair. life isn’t fair. i’ve heard it all. it’s taken me a really long time to get to where i am. this pro-active mentality of actually taking a class to hopefully help me do better on this test. as much as i was amused by the info that the GRE is a much more male-oriented test, what i was more interested in and sitting there too early on a saturday morning was for my own personal success. i don’t really want to be part of a statistic, but i knew that invariably i would become one. rather than fixating on that or fighting it, i decided that what really will measure success in test taking or any aspect of life depends entirely on… drumroll… you. forget if you’re male or female, fresh out of school or feeling like it’s been awhile, none of that really matters. i am feeling incredibly inspired right now to succeed in my life, that success will be of my own version and not anyone else’s. and i was sitting in a classroom full of similarly minded students. these people are invested in their own success, their own futures. put aside the scary economy, the competitive applications, the shortage of federally funded student loans, the feelings of self-doubt and confusion, in those 4 hours we were feeling clear-headed with one goal in mind. i’m tired of complaining about my life and wasting the daylight hours away behind a job that i’m not into. i recognize that graduate school may not be the answer to all my problems, but putting my foot forward instead of standing there or backtracking was an indescribably refreshing feeling.

when you’re stuck in a rut, it’s all you can do to acknowledge, i think i’m stuck in a rut. somehow, someway i am beginning to get out of my own. maybe it’s the signs of spring influencing me. maybe it’s witnessing those around me springing into action. maybe it’s just that realization of, well if you’re not going to do anything about it, who else will? and perhaps it’s not so much about the question, what do you want to do with your life? but more… what do you want to do about your life right now that will bring you the most happiness? and will you reach out/go out and actually do it?