GRE Verbal

No point in taking this anymore

So today I finally open my Princeton Review Cracking the GRE book and didn't feel like crying 35 times, so I decided to skip the math and look at the verbal section. The book starts off with a section that tells you to follow a particular pace for the exam depending on what your realistic goal score is in verbal, so I circle 800 because English is my native language and then take a look at the analogy section. Um - HAVE YOU SEEN THIS SHIT? Apparently I've been reading Mary Higgins Clark books for 27 years, because I have never heard or seen half these words before in my life and they actually may not even be English. Tyro? Pusillanimous? Jejune? Stygian? Is this a joke. Last time I checked, Jejune was a club in NYC but apparently that's not the "dictionary" definition that will get you any credit on the exam, so basically if you are a giant nerd and know the real definition because you refresh the Merriam-Webster site every two seconds, that's better than if you actually have a life and have stood in line for the club once but it was closed for a private party.

I don't understand why someone doesn't institute a policy whereby if certain words haven't been used in two centuries except by the ETS people on annoying standardized tests, they need to be thrown out of the dictionary. I mean, these people are acting like I sit around all day reading the NY Post, watching cartoons and playing hangman and that I didn't go to VERY prestigious institutions and read all the Cliff Notes for my classes. Apparently they are expecting me to stop whatever I'm doing and just ride the elevator at my former job up and down waiting for the ridiculous "word of the day" to pop up on the Elevator Captive Network, immediately writing it down and making flash cards out of it. Look, I know this blog may not be copyedited and proofed within an inch of its life but the last person to use these words in actual sentences was Robinson Crusoe and frankly if I used "cavil" in any of my very important papers at work, people would have told me to stop being a jerk and starting being real because nobody knows what cavil is and all it's doing is making people feel bad.