Back to (un)cool

It’s nine o’clock on a Thursday night. Under normal circumstances, I would be in my room, busting out an arsenal of early ‘90s dance moves to The Sounds and eagerly raiding the darkest recesses of my closet for a colorful mishmash of an ensemble to serve as a clever icebreaker at my favorite weeknight haunt. Texts from fellow ‘80s babies and dance floor denizens would flood my cell phone, punctuating the lyrics to “Tony the Beat” with abrupt message alerts that sound like fairy dust... If you pressed your ear to my door, you’d be convinced that Tinkerbell and I were going to town and kicking off the weekend early (because Thursday is, like, totally the new Friday again, ever since Mondays became marketing opportunities for all these night clubs).

Tonight, however, no such pre-game is going on. Instead of brandishing a Day-Glo statement tee, I’m in the same muumuu I’ve been wearing around the house all day. My phone is on silent and buried in my vanity drawer because I’m way too embarrassed to tell my friends I’m staying home and, no, I’m not sick. I’ve smoked about a pack and a half of cigarettes, which is odd because now I smell like I’ve been clubbing even if there’s no way I’m leaving the house tonight. My best friend finally ambushes me by calling my landline (people still do that?!) and asks me where the hell I’ve been and what time I’m headed out tonight. I take a deep breath and try to think of a good lie, but she knows I’m stalling so I decide to suck it up and tell her the ridiculous truth. “I’m not going out tonight,” I say, already picturing the expression of disbelief on her face, “I’m staying home to study.”

My forays into lifestyle journalism brought about a sense of purpose I found difficult to ignore. As a result, I decided to begin the application process to graduate schools in the United States. It seemed only logical to hone my talent at an institution that would provide me with training much more specialized than the broad-based liberal arts education I received as an undergraduate student without a specific goal. My parents and friends were supportive of my decision to pursue a master’s degree and I was confident that I would breeze through the application process as if I were picking out a pair of shoes during sale season. Paper applications were a thing of the past, so I no longer had to worry about meeting deadlines by relying on the questionable services offered by the Philippine Post Office (I’m convinced they stole the Magic Sing I shipped home from Switzerland… I’ve since replaced it with the Pacquiao Edition but that version doesn’t have any Abba songs on it). Those I approached to write recommendation forms for me agreed to do so with alacrity. I flipped through the smorgasbord of clips I’d stashed away over the years and found a few distinctive pieces to include in my application. I ticked items off my list of grad school requirements at the same ease with which I scratched Fall 2007’s must-have accessories off my wish list. However, my overzealousness to take the proverbial next step in terms of furthering my education was immediately dampened upon the realization that getting into any graduate school in America required me to suffer through the motions of taking the GREs, or Graduate Record Examinations.

The GREs are computer-adaptive tests administered to graduate school applicants as a means of classifying their skills in extemporaneous essay writing and verbal and quantitative (fancy way of saying “math”) reasoning into figures that help admissions officers determine whether or not the applicant is “right” for the school. I personally believe that standardizing a person’s abilities defeats the entire purpose of fastidiously compiling testimonials to their uniqueness. I also hate taking tests. But this was an inevitable demon I had to slay, and with much bellyaching, I took the necessary steps to prepare for it.

Nerd is the New Black

I hadn’t taken a test in years and all of a sudden I found myself studying with the diligence I lacked throughout high school and my freshman year of college. I hung up my dancing shoes, determined to forego the frivolous in favor of review classes, vocabulary lists and math problems. Over the weeks, I discovered new and extremely frightening aspects about myself, along with mathematical formulas I would never use in my life and word definitions that I would, in no way, be able to slip into casual conversation. The overwhelming amount of information I tried to process led to insomnia and spastic fits of worry. I would chat online with my cousin in California and my best friend in New York simply because no one else in my time zone was awake to chill me out. I started to break out in nervous hives that frightened even my dog. I began to doubt the likelihood that I would do well on the test and even considered applying to schools in states I couldn’t even point out on a map.

I couldn’t ever remember being that nervous in my entire life. I cruised through high school on lackadaisical efforts to meet unchallenging requirements and enough cheat sheets to write a how-to book for future delinquents. I took a more serious approach to my undergraduate education simply because I was given the choice to dabble in fields that actually piqued my interest. Of course, this attitude did not come without the occasional indifference of a slacker-generation baby who would have preferred to bat her eyes at pretty boys and jet-set across Europe than figure out her long-term goal in life. Heck, I used to think I was a pretty cool kid, not this sleep-deprived spazz tormented by nervous hives and visions of failure.

As I was contemplating this new and unsettling dimension of my self, it occurred to me that perhaps “nerdiness” had been a latent quality that had only decided to manifest now because, for once in my life, I finally had a sense of purpose. Getting into graduate school would only be the first of many steps I had to take before I could earn my place amongst my personal heroes, print mavericks such as Tom Robbins, Anna Wintour, Terry Jones and Marvin Scott Jarrett. Perhaps my late-night stress-induced outbursts were justified by the fact that for the first time, I felt something very real was at stake. And despite the magnitude of what I was trying to achieve, it was comforting to know that I was approaching it one dorky little day at a time. These days, I’m finally getting some sleep at night, regardless of the occasional nervous hives. So what if I can’t dance for now? Hopefully the next time I shake my groove thing, it’ll be the victory dance I do after I rock the GREs.

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If you need help studying for the SATs, GREs, GMATs or TOEFL, I would recommend that you contact Solomon’s Center for Wisdom at 899-7388 (look for Baby) for a tutor. Wisdom and wisecracks are always welcome at whippersnappergirl@hotmail.com.