Today I finished making the flashcards from the vocab lists in my Cracking the GRE book. I already had 50% of the main lists covered with my cards from the flashcard kit I bought. However, they added some "bonus" lists, and basically threw in words that have more than one meaning. For example, meet means fitting or proper, intimate to imply, suggest or insinuate, and waffle, to equivocate or change one's position. Now I have about 150 more flash cards to work through.

I also started in on the math chapter. My math is a little rusty, but I actually did pretty well. I learned some shortcuts that I have never heard of before, stuff like "an integer is divisible by four if the sum of the last two digits is divisible by four." That will certainly make life easier (you're not allowed to use calculators during the exam). I am a tiny bit ashamed to admit that this problem took me forever:

"At the rate of f/3 feet per m minutes, how many feet can a bicycle travel in s seconds?"

A) fs/60m
B) 60s/fm
C) fms/180
D) fm/180s
E) fs/180m

My problem is, the book tries to teach you the easy way to figure out these problems, but I tend to just skim through the text and jump to the example problems and solve them the hard algebraic way. Finding the answer was easier than I made it.

I know the stuff I am posting is pretty meaningless, but I am writing all this down to give myself a timeline to reflect upon for the future. That way I can look back and see when I did what, and how much time I needed to do something.

I will offer a rice krispie treat to the first person to answer that question correctly. Abby, when are you going to collect on your winnings from the x-ray? ;)

I still need to write about what I did last Friday morning when I shadowed, but I can't seem to find the note card that I wrote everything down on. Hopefully I can find it soon.

In the meantime, I started studying today for the GRE. I bought a prep book and a box of 500 flashcards of vocab. Just like most people in my shoes, the verbal portion is going to be the hardest for me. Math should be a cinch.

I'm almost through the verbal portion of the book. The advice and strategies they give actually help!! For example, in the analogies section, they had a practice quiz at the end. I didn't know probably half the words, yet I got a 9/10 of the questions right.

I decided to go through 30 flashcards a day, and I thought that it would take a while to really know those words. It only took 15 minutes though today. My plan is to go through 30 words each weekday, and then use the weekends for a comprehensive review. I've also taken out a book from the library that has a bunch of extra practice questions.

Bring on the GRE!