I discovered today I am going to have to retake the GRE. That does not make me happy; at all. I took it in May of 2001 when I applied for my Masters degree. I did pretty well--there were three sections: Verbal, Math and Analytical. I scored in the middle 600s on both Verbal and Math and got a perfect 800 on the Analytical. Bam. It didn't matter to me one bit that none of the schools I applied to cared whatsoever about the analytical section. I got a perfect. A+. Three years ago the GRE dropped the analytical section and replaced with a writing section. As you can tell from my less than stellar blog entries I am not a very good writer. I don't think I make many grammatical mistakes but I've always prefered math things to English things and I never pretend to be anything more than an average writer. Now I need to retake this damned test replacing my best section with a section I am sure to bomb. Not only that, but when was the last time I had to do any math beyond the algebra or geometry that I have to use as a programmer? Oh that's right, never. Does someone who is getting a Ph.D in music really need to know calculus? I took AP Calculus in High School and that was the last math class I had. Ten years ago. Truly the only math I use now is in things like $array_count=count($array); and I am doubtful they are going to be asking the math questions in terms of PHP. Crap. On top of this Jamie took the GRE a couple of years ago for her Masters and set the bar really high for me. I always had the Analytical section before but now I have nothing; she's a fantastic writer and now I have nothing. I am now the academically retarded one in our relationship and that sucks.