Tests are cool.

Back at Family House. It's crazy how fast my weekends here go, considering that I sit at a desk for the duration. I plan to check out grad schools this weekend. That feeling of intense self-doubt is creeping back into me again. That familiar voice, with its familiar antagonistic tone. You can't do this. You will never get in. Stop kidding yourself. And then I take the GRE and do poorly and I acquiesce to that voice, agree with it and at the same time battle against it, as I attempt to throw together all of the materials that will be reviewed for admission. When I applied to the Pacific School of Religion through GTU, I wasn't nervous. I had confidence. Easy reponse: "Well there you go - you just need to have some confidence." But it really isn't that simple. GTU didn't have a strict rule on GRE scores. They are a school of religion and by rule more forgiving. Although that is being a little idealistic, I suppose. Anyway, I knew all of that when I applied and just assumed I'd get in. And I did. I didn't actually go, but that's not the point. Now I'm looking at the University of Oregon and they not only require a GRE subject test, which is going to be death and blood and hell to me, but they have a minimum score requirement. I am already at a disadvantage not having an English degree. God, if I could only do well on that test. It makes me feel so powerless and unintelligent. I have never been able to do well on those goddamned tests. No matter how smart I think I am, if I am standing next to one of those high scoring SAT/GRE assholes, I will always, no matter what, feel less intelligent.

I have such a complex about it, I know. Why do I care? I really don't know. I feel embarassed talking about it, but it's reality, it's the truth - so I'm going to post it. But its not that I want to be smarter than those high-scorers. I guess I wish there wasn't a test to begin with; that intelligence was left the way it actually is - impossible to define. Intelligence isn't something you have or don't have. It's something that everyone has, it's a mode or a skill by which everyone functions. A utility. But with tests out there to judge your intelligence, it becomes something else - fixed. It becomes one specific thing, as opposed to no specific thing. And its defined by those who make the tests. fuck.

I need to stop all of this. It's making me upset and depressed. On another note, I had a spinach and artichoke egg souffle this morning, and I liked it.