Too Much Testing Makes the Student Go Blind

So, the good news is that I got the official word that I passed the comprehensive exams! The bad news is that I can't quite bask in the awesomeness of that because now I'm onto cramming for the GRE Subject Test, which happens this weekend. I somehow went from not having any kind of exam for years to having the GRE general test, the comprehensive exams and the GRE subject test all within a 3 month period. I even have a final exam -- a rarity in a literature program -- on December 19th!

All of the cramming--because really, at this pace, cramming is the only way--is having an effect on me. It's showing through in my dreams, for example. I'm having very weird dreams where I'm either flagging pages with post-it notes or telling people about how irrelevant John Ruskin is in my dream conversations.

I've even tried to maximize my time by watching the most horrible film adaptations of classic literature (like the Odyssey from 1997, which is really just too awful for words) to refresh my memory on the name of the islands where he gets lost and blah blah blah...the movie is so bad that in the movie trailer they resort to citing praise from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

My waning optimism has been reduced to a hope that I might finally fulfill my wish of being awesome at pub quizzes. I'm usually too slow to respond, and I think of the answers at like midnight long after the quiz is over. Anyone (which is pretty much all of you who have ever played a game with me) who has beaten me at trivial pursuit or any other game might reconsider me as a worthy team member. That's all I'm saying.