I took the GRE in December during finals week probably not one of my best times to take it, and to say it went bad would be an understatement, for those of you have taken this test know how hard it is. You have to study months in advance and basically be a dictionary if you want to do well on the verbal section. Because of my learning disability I receive time and half on my test, the test is typically 4 hours that is for students who do not take time and half. Now for me it should be a little longer. I got to the testing site, early ready to take the test. You are not aloud to bring any food or water into the test(or really anything). They make you lock all your stuff in a locker and if you get cold/hot you are not able to take off or on a sweater. They do this to protect people from cheating, personally if someone is hiding answer questions in their sweater and is able to read it while they are taking it off hats off to you. Anyways, I have enough anxiety going into the test already worrying if I’m going to pass this test and get into graduate school, with out having to worry if I’m going to be hungry/thirsty, going to have to blow my nose(which you have to ask for tissues if you want them) or be too hot or cold.
When i started the test I put all my effort into the essay portion I worked so hard, felt like I was off to a good start. After the essay portion came the quantitative section which typically should be 45 min, now during the test i was so freaked out i couldn’t remember how long each section should be so i just assumed that 45 min was time and half for me. (NOPE). Some how my time and half got messed up half way through the test. and I was not given it. I figured this out when I was leaving the test center and realized i took all the time possible and it only took me 3 hours and 50 min. A good and bad part of the end of the test is your score pops up on the screen right away, so the good news is you dont have to worry about waiting, and the bad news is I found out how bad I did right away.

I was already late handing my gre scores in to my schools because it took a long proccessing time to recevie time and half on the GRE. ETS is takes giving time and half very seirously and make you jump through alot of hoops to get it! Soooooo the schools need my scores, so off they went right after I hit end on the test.

I walked out of the test, and called my family right away. Now most people reading this make think well how bad could you have really done, well bad! You need at least 1000 to be considered for most programs.

My mom is miss optimistic and she said “well honey, maybe this this a good thing, the schools will be so surprised about your GRE score that they will take a closer look at how wonderful you are”.  My dads advice, “well just another obstacle we need to get past sweetie, standardized tests are not one of your strengths, and we will just have to figure out another way to the finish line, you are so amazing at working with people and are so passionate about psychology that it will shine through” and my sisters always calms me down, “okay we got this, we can take it again and I will help you study, and honesty do you think they would rather have someone that can just take a stupid test and have no people skills or someone who is amazing at working with children and knows all the information but has a hard time with tests plus you have your Masters you can do this!”.  My family is my support team, and are there for me no matter what. I have to say I don’t know what I would do with out them during this process.

Since schools are starting to make decisions I didn’t have time to retake the test, even if ETS messed up. So I’m sticking to my score, and that’s all that I can do. I believe what school I get into is the school I’m suppose to be at.