GRE- Revanquished!

Let cries of rejoicing reach to the heavens- the dreaded Physics GRE has been vanquished once more! I felt much better about this one, as the answers kept flowing and if I didn't know something I really didn't know it, so didn't even hazard the guess.

But let's skip back a few days from that shall we, and I shall regale with the full tale. A few weeks ago I found out that a) Rachel had signed up for the test in Northfield due to justified paranoia, b) I had stupidly forgotten this and signed myself up for the test in St. Paul, and c) it was too late to switch test centers as the deadline for this was before we had not taken the October test.

But all was well- it was just one more symptom of the test hating us, no? I would drive Rachel down on Friday evening and pick her up again on Saturday. No biggy. Rachel made a reservation at the Archer House and all seemed well... until her hotel accidentally lost her accommodations. This lead to approximately two hours of us sitting worried and depressed in Northfield waiting for the staff to find another suitably close hotel room. Of course, being Northfield, most of the rooms were booked in every single hotel in town. The only relatively close hotel that could be found was a Motel 8 way down the road, and the only rooms that they had were smoking rooms. Rachel rightly got a taxi out of the deal to transport her to the test the next morning and I had to head out as I had not yet found my testing location, and I am paranoid.

After finding my testing site I called Rachel who, with our freaky ESP in full swing, was calling me at exactly the same time, causing us to leave messages on each others phones. Apparently the management had forgotten to tell her that they had another room with a jacuzzi and "a bed large enough to sleep 6 people" according to Rach, that was non-smoking. Huzzah!

So the test came... in St Paul they not only had signs this time (see above) but there were plenty of people exactly where the test was! We were all jam packed into one lecture hall for three hours and released, with at least my own self in triumphant pride. I proceeded to head to the Bulldog for a victory feast of a steakhouse burger, truffle fries (yes, TRUFFLE fries) and a ridiculous Belgian beer called Kwak, as pictured here:

 

Around dinner time I picked up Rachel from Northfield and we had a great chat with Alison, one of the people responsible for the theaters at Carleton and someone with whom I had worked closely while involved in the Carleton theater scene. We then headed northwards, were treated to drinks and dessert by our gracious landlord and celebrated the rest of the night with friends at a week-late Halloween party.

Now I am in the midst of deciding my future... updates to come as they do.

Until next time...

"Trusting in Providence is a very good thing, as far as it goes, but a chart and a compass are worth six of it, any time. Statistics have shown this to be true."
- remark written in manuscript for Life on the Mississippi. Quoted in Mark Twain and Human Nature by Tom Quirk (Univ. of Mo. Press, 2007).