Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[Violet]

Yes, I did. I did well on both sections. 170 is the top score in either quantitative or verbal. What else are you looking for?

[Dead Cat]

Isaiah chapters in English: hard, but doable. Isaiah chapters in Italian: I have no idea what's going on.

[Portia]

GRE-ers, just wondering if it's worth taking if I'm not 100% sure I'm going to apply. My top choice doesn't require it, so I feel unmotivated. It's pricey.

[Violet]

If it's not required, is it recommended?


Also: I have a place to live and a quiet roommate and I'm in the neighborhood I wanted. I am thrilled.

[Marduk]

If you scored well, I'd totally take it. I also took it recently. It was about $180 and they will send it to up to five schools for free. (That doesn't seem expensive to me, considering applying to a school costs $50-80. And I'm sure most other schools require it.)

[Portia]

Yeah my top choice is a non-degree-seeking fellowship. The program director was pretty helpful in terms of the local degree-granting programs. If anyone wants to PM or email me a long discourse about why I should stay in the corporate world, fire away.

[vorpal blade]

Isaiah chapters in English: hard, but doable. Isaiah chapters in Italian: I have no idea what's going on.

Lately I've been reading some Isaiah chapters in my Italian Book of Mormon. I don't know all the Italian words, so I just reconstruct what it would say in English. Why would the Italian be more difficult to understand? By the way, the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon are a lot like the King James Version. Which version of the Italian Bible are you reading?

[Dead Cat]

Isaiah chapters in English: hard, but doable. Isaiah chapters in Italian: I have no idea what's going on.

Lately I've been reading some Isaiah chapters in my Italian Book of Mormon. I don't know all the Italian words, so I just reconstruct what it would say in English. Why would the Italian be more difficult to understand? By the way, the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon are a lot like the King James Version. Which version of the Italian Bible are you reading?

I don't have an Italian bible, I'm just doing BoM. I'm not very good at Italian anyway, so I look up a lot of words (and am likely forget them in about 10 seconds) and I find it all too easy to get lost in the sentence construction. I try not to look at the English when I read (unless I get super lost) and Isaiah tends to phrase things in more complicated ways than my Italian brain can handle, so I've gone from a snail's pace to a heavily bruised snail's pace.

[vorpal blade]

I can't seem to find my Italian Bible. But I have been curious about the Italian translation of the Book of Mormon. Actually, I have two quite different translations of the Book of Mormon. I'm wondering if the translators used an existing copy of the Bible when they translated the Isaiah chapters, and if so which version did they use? Are the different translations of the Book of Mormon in Italian the same in the Isaiah chapters? Is one version of the Italian translation easier to understand than another? You've made me curious now to try to find out some of these questions I've had but never got around to finding answers.

Which translation of the Italian Book of Mormon are you using?

[Imogen]

S out of all the schools like us in Texas (over 40) we were NUMBER ONE in student progress and NUMBER TWO in closing the achievement gap.

MY SCHOOL CAN DO NO WRONG NOW!!!!

[Emiliana]

S out of all the schools like us in Texas (over 40) we were NUMBER ONE in student progress and NUMBER TWO in closing the achievement gap.

MY SCHOOL CAN DO NO WRONG NOW!!!!

YAY YOU! (We had this exact same meeting today except that we were right smack in the middle of our 40-school pool....better than a few years ago anyway!)

[mic0]

Ahhhh congrats!

[Random]

Sooooo... I'm thinking about auditioning for a movie. About girls camp. I can totally pass for a 12-18 year old girl, right?

[mic0]

You should audition, that would be exciting!

[mic0]

Just spent way too long at furniture stores. Uuuuuuuuuuugh. I greatly dislike shopping, that is all.

[Portia]

So I think I have some case of oneupsmanship or something. I have this irrational feeling that I should take the LSAT or GMAT or something even though I have no desire to became an attorney and even less to be a businesswoman. Maybe I just like things that are easily quantifiable.

I think this all started about ten years ago. I vividly remember chatting in the library, everyone discussing what we got on the SAT (old scoring system). I was unimpressed with my score of 1460 and said I'd retake it. (I did, bringing it up to a 1510.) This was a very rational decision in the days of the scholarship matrix: with no scholarship, I couldn't afford college. The only reason I didn't have to work freshman year was because I had done exceptionally well on the PSAT at like 14. I don't see how being clever on a three-hour test when you've barely passed puberty would predict collegiate success, but one prestigious award breeds another and you feel like not being perfect is failing. Hell, my current job in the tech world required reporting all these test scores and it has less than nothing to do with how well I perform at my job. (Average; I'm easily distracted.)

So, I don't know, can I get some validation that doing a solid, thorough job in something you enjoy and that betters the world is just as valid a goal for someone bright and ambitious as entering the C suite or making partner or whatever? I really just want to teach literature, write in the summers, snowboard in the winters. You don't have to take tests to do well in those fields: you just do them and get better by doing.

My counselor said to "set attainable goals" which to me seemed like a euphemism for "shoot for average." I just feel like there's a lot more I could be doing to improve my little corner of the world and a lifestyle of fast (-ish) living and essentially no human relationships just doesn't seem like it's it.

I guess I'm sick of measuring my self-worth by imaginary investment banker types that I neither know nor would care for if I did. When I think of the people I most admire, they tend to be artistic types: sculptors, musicians, against-all-odds fiction writers, or public-servant types: the poli sci major who wants to "fight for the middle class," the high school friends who went into the medical field not for remuneration (they didn't need it) but to save lives, the principals of schools who gave up other careers to help kids. I'm sick of feeling like you have to reach perfection at 29 and then the next fifty years of your life are discounted.

My counselor also thinks I should date around to "distract" myself, which I think is terrible advice when you have Ted Mosby Syndrome. Haha. I feel like until and unless I'm confident in who I am and where I'm going, I wouldn't even attract that kind of guy anyway.

[Emiliana]

I don't see how being clever on a three-hour test when you've barely passed puberty would predict collegiate success, but one prestigious award breeds another and you feel like not being perfect is failing.

Yep...

[Whistler]

in order for test scores not to determine your self worth you must genuinely believe that being smarter or a better test-taker doesn't make you better than other people. It might help if you made friends with someone and respected them, and then still respected them after finding out they scored poorly on a test.

[Portia]

in order for test scores not to determine your self worth you must genuinely believe that being smarter or a better test-taker doesn't make you better than other people. It might help if you made friends with someone and respected them, and then still respected them after finding out they scored poorly on a test.

I really enjoyed this convocation speech by George Saunders. You may like it, too.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

[Digit]

Here's a funny article about a crazy mother who got caught up using her daughter to satisfy her lifelong need to resolve her feelings of not being smart enough.