Me and My Buddy Math

Math isn't really my buddy.  Math is like that kid in elementary school who you think is really cool, and you get excited when they invite you to their birthday party at the rolling rink, and they are nice and all, but when it's time for partner skating, Math is somebody else's partner.  You're OK with it-- I mean, you aren't Math's best friend or anything.  It would just be nice to be really good friends with Math, 'cause she seems pretty neat.  But you just don't have that much in common, so it's best not to force it.

Reading, writing, vocabulary.  Sentence and paragraph comprehension.  We're best friends.  Verbal and I have gotten down and dirty with it all my life.  In third grade, I got in trouble for reading ahead in the CAT-5 testing book to the vocab section when I was supposed to be doing the geometry section.  We even fight-- should language be prescriptive or descriptive?  I love my canon (oh, Jane Austen!), but I want space for everybody else.  Is Shakespeare really all he's cracked up to be (current opinion-- yes.  This changes almost annually).  But Verbal got me scholarships.  Verbal got me grants.  We're very close, Verbal and I.

It's not that I hate math-- I think it's endlessly fascinating, and when combined with theory, an incredibly gorgeous art form.  I have a friend who talks about math and physics like it's the one true religion, and when he talks about it, I sometimes think it is.  But all the respect in the world for math isn't going to get me a score above 600 on the GRE.  

The thing is, it's seventh and eighth grade math (supposedly).  I have freakin' taught seventh and eighth grade math!  So why can't I score above a 510 on any of the practice tests?  I've been studying like a fiend (which has brought my score up from a dismal 410), with The Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE.  I highly recommend it.  Also, working with math teachers helps, too-- I've brought several concepts to work, and the lovely ladies have stayed after or on their breaks from students to help me factor exponents and figure out the formulas for percentage increases and decreases.  I feel more confident now then when I got that 410, but I'm still really stinkin' nervous.  

So tomorrow is the big day-- eight in the morning, and no coffee allowed.  All I want is a score in the low 600's.  Verbal will be my skating buddy... I just want Math to come to the party and eat some cake.