ETS - Crushing my hopes and dreams since 2002

The people who know me in real life know that I truly only have one goal - to overthrow the ETS and establish a system for judging education that is not a standardized test. 

For those of you who do not suffer test anxiety and argue that it's the only way are probably not as familiar with the ETS, or the Educational Testing Service, as I am. ETS is actually a non-profit organization that claims to give a "public service" to the education system. I'm uncertain as to exactly what this public service really is. 

Doing rough, hyperbolic math, I've realized that by the time I am finished with my education (I want a PhD, folks) the ETS will have taken what could be my first year's teaching salary from me. 

ETS creates everything from the AP tests, to the SATs, to the GRE, to the TOEFL, and everything in between. ETS kept me out of my first choice colleges and graduate schools, despite having a good GPA and personal references. In fact, the only graduate school I was accepted to was in London where they didn't care to learn about my standardized test scores. Shepherd was okay with my GPA, and didn't really want my GRE score, either. 

Every time I take one of these, I tell myself that I won't get freaked out, but I do. These tests do this magical thing called deciding the course the rest of my life will take after the test is over. If that sounds exaggerated, go talk to the Elon University admissions folk. Their first letter to me said I needed to improve my SAT score to improve my consideration. That was it. Graduate school admissions people will tell you that you can kick your course work's proverbial ass during your undergraduate career, have a flawless personal statement, but if someone else has these same qualities and can regurgitate information on a multiple choice test better than you...FAIL, try better next time. 

A few years ago the University of Maryland took a pool of their freshman class and split them up into groups based on students accepted with high, average, and low SAT scores. At the end of the students' first semester, they compared their overall GPAs. Lo and behold, there was no correlation to how well the students did on their SAT to how they performed their first semester of college. 

Shock, truly. 

The rooms are probably the worst part. When I took the Praxis I over the summer, I drove there popping a few breath mints because they're supposed to stimulate the brain and help you focus. I had one in my mouth as I was going through the sign in process and I had to either chew it up or spit it out before I was let into the room. Please, tell me, how do you cheat on a test with a breath mint?! The rooms are incredibly quiet and filled with the clickety clack of computers and there are giant sound canceling headphones for your sanity's pleasure. You can't bring in a sweat shirt, you can't look around, you can't talk, you can't sigh, you just vomit random information all over a computer. There is no rhyme or reason to the questions they ask you which is why the ETS has come out and said you can't study for their tests. How does a test you can't study for show how prepared you are for college where you're, you know, supposed to study?!

Someday, I will find the monkeys and hamsters that sit in a big building on Mount Olympus and set them free from their test creation and scoring bondage. All high school students will praise me, and I will finally be popular and I will completely revolutionize how kids get into college forever. And then I'll dance, because, you know, a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having. 

I'm going to step off my soap box and study for a test I can't study for. I'm going to fill my heart with rainbows, ponies, and flowers and have something more pleasant to say tomorrow, or the next day....

Spring makes Shepherdstown crazy

Yesterday was markedly the first beautiful day of the almost-spring season. These temperatures and things are always quite obvious even if you aren't outside. Something happens to Shepherdstown when warm weather finally graces us with its presence, and it's truly wonderful. The morning started with smoothies and a walk through town with Jessica and a grilled cheese sandwich at the Carriage House. In class, one of my favorite professors laughed at me which made my day, and I ran into Neena, Marie, and Neena's sister Lucy at the Lost Dog for the first almond espresso smoothie of the season. It was delicious. I brought John a donut for the excuse to drive around willy-nilly before the Vagina Monologues cast party at the Blue Moon. 

A very Shepherdstownian sort of afternoon, completely unproductive, unfortunately. 

I discovered the Blue Moon has a great beer selection, and enjoyed the time with the girls before a few of us headed over to the Meck for some post dinner drinks. I went next door to Tony's for a little bit to see the Golden Butter Band perform. They're a Shepherdstown staple and I had never seen them before, but every concert I've wanted to see this year has been sold out, so I figured I'd go to get some sort of live music in my life. They were good, but Tony's was packed with flailing hippies, which is all well and good, but we couldn't even get through the door down stairs. I lasted about three tunes before I was really feeling claustrophobic so I met John and we went to a party for one of his friend's birthdays, which included some of the people from the cast party. We pretty much dominated Pictionary and headed back here around 2:00.

Today, it's supposed to be just as beautiful and I really need to get some Praxis study time in, but I may sandwich some spring clothing shopping with two study sessions, maybe one outside. I live large, truly. 

Eastern mid-Atlantic? Enjoy these next few days before we head back into the tundra! Everyone else? Enjoy your weekend!  

Ignore Any Grossness

I'm in the process of making life over here at Phase: Next a little cooler looking. A make over in anticipation of spring, if you will. The current header, I am aware, is a giant picture of yours truly. I don't want to lose my groove, and it probably will resize, but, just scroll down if you don't want to look at anything so ghastly huge. Even better...give me some tips on what to do! I've only done web/photo editing related stuff on computers that were pretty hooked up with all the Macintosh-y bells and whistles. I'm doing what I can with Comic Life, iPhoto, and preview, and if you're a Mac, you know that isn't much. 

Drop me an e-mail or comment if you want to give me a hand!

My Friday was successful here in the Eastern panhandle of W.Va. I went out with the ladies and danced my adorably white tail off thanks to a few of my favorite martini - the pink diamond at 3 Onions. I'm pretty impressed with the makeover that place has been given, and the tunage that was happening. Have you heard Flo Rida's "Right Round?" It's quite possibly the most perfect dance tune I've heard in a while. I think I fell in love. I'm also pretty convinced that "Single Ladies" has started some sort of weird feminist-but-not phenomenon. As soon as the girls in the bar sensed that song was about to play, everyone was a single lady. Including me. It was this bizarre moment of empowerment as all of the guys anywhere near the dance floor backed away looking sort of scared. 

My friend Heidi came in this weekend, too. We had a good time going to get my hair cut and catching up on gossip that we've both missed out on. We entertained ourselves with the official "Mean Girls" drinking game, which made a wonderful movie even more so. 

All-in-all a freaky sort of girly weekend that boys anywhere near the 25443 would have ever been able to understand. Sometimes, we need things like that, especially in the two-week stretch before spring break that seems like it will never end. I need that week more than anything else in the world right now. I need spring weather, too. It was fourteen degrees today. FOURTEEN. Boo. Winter. 

A PRAXIS II book is staring at me right now, and I shouldn't deny its gaze anymore. Seriously, on the help with making this place blog-tastic. (I've toyed around with getting a revamp done, but it just isn't in the budget currently) If you're willing to lend your talents, I'll lend linkage over to your space! 

Saving Friday.

Right, well, I've been sitting here multi-tasking. Read: watching "What Not To Wear," pulling an eight month old cat off of my curtains, drinking coffee, and reading Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I realized I never shared my tale of last Friday with you all, and that it's probably way over due, but that what I thought of writing about today definitely wouldn't make sense unless you heard it from me, first. So...the Cliff's Notes version of the worst night ever. 

Objective: Go out for drinks with friends: one "classy" beverage with friends after a concert, and a few "not-so-classy beverages with friends at a bar where a birthday party was in full swing. 

SWBAT: Forget about what was obviously the Hell-week of the semester, and possibly dance. 

Activity: After the wind ensemble concert, I went over to the Press Room for what inevitably turns into a drink, a dessert, and a ton of gossip. When the time comes to pay, and boyfriend and Kelly come to pick me up to go over to said bar party, my wallet is not in my purse. I realize I went to get cash, and left it in my car, my car is at my house and my keys are missing. Boyfriend and Kelly love me enough to go on a wild goose chase for my keys. Search proves unsuccessful. I realize no only can I not get into my car to get my wallet, but I can't get into the bar because my ID is with my keys and the bar is 21 tonight. So I don't have to wash dishes, lil Bec pays for my cannoli and white Russian and I return home, defeated, to find my keys. Now, if you're paying attention, some asshole broke into my car a few weeks ago, and my wallet is now in plain view on my seat. It must come out, and I'm convinced at this point that I dropped my keys on German Street and some creeper is going to find my house and come visit me in the middle of the night. So, I call AAA. My AAA card is in my car, and they take a half an hour to find my number. Guy comes, gets lost, sets off my car alarm, wallet is safe, spare car key is in Texas, night is ruined. Everyone leaves my panicked house, and I search the closet one more time. There, like a beacon, are my keys in the back corner of my closet, wrapped up in the jeans I threw in a frenzy trying to find them. It is now 3 a.m. and the bar hosting the party is closed and I'm livid. 

Discussion: Was .bethany. in the wrong searching for her camera before going out on a Friday night in such a hurry, or are fantastic alcohol-induced memories worth the risk? 

Lesson learned. My purse is already packed for tonight, camera already in an inside pouch, and my keys? Not leaving my purse. Tonight are girly drinks and dancing, tomorrow is time with a very good friend I haven't seen in a while, rushing will not ruin my night. 

Have a good weekend, bloggy-friends! 

Boyfriend and I are spending the day together.

If we live to see our anniversary (tomorrow), I'll let you know how that goes as well. 

Before I begin, let me briefly discuss how wonderful of a girlfriend I am. Wednesday is my "day off," in this sense of the word, "day off" means the day when I don't have classes, but get caught up on the pile of work that has somehow amassed since Monday. It's also my day to sleep in a re-charge, since I probably haven't slept for more than 3 or 4 hours a night since the previous Wednesday. Wednesdays are amazing. Wednesdays are mine. This morning, I drove out to Ranson at 8:30 so boyfriend could take his car in to the shop. Since he has no transportation, or work today, he is here until we can go get his car. He likes ESPN, I like reading the British classics to the tune of MTV and VH1. You can see where the problems lie. 

However, I'm a great girlfriend and since our anniversary is tomorrow, I will read my British classics to the tune of some thing on MTV that is for current college football players entering the draft. It reminds me of the auctioning off of race horses, actually. 

Let's see...last night was the State of the Nation. I'm not sure what the difference is between the State of the Nation and the State of the Union, but, I am fairly certain Nancy Pelosi was wearing a pea-green Snuggie, a few shades darker than the green one advertised on the commercial. New goal: become Speaker of the House so I, too, can get a custom-made Snuggie and have it be totally acceptable on national television. 

I didn't catch the whole thing, I watched long enough to get excited about the promised education plan and scan the room for people falling asleep. We, then, went to Tony's for Fat Tuesday cheese fries to serve as a post-pancake supper dessert. My Lenten sacrifice to give up fast food and eat one fruit and one veggie each day is totally necessary now. 

Life is starting to calm down, so I'm embracing it...not entirely sure how long it'll last. 

Can you be homesick at home?

Home is a lot of things. Home is where the heart is, where you lay your head down at night, where your morning paper is delivered, where you're comfortable to walk around in undies and a huge tee-shirt, where you go after a long day to find a comfortable couch and television remote to take your brain away. For the past 22 years, home has been wherever those people on that raft drinking Red Stripe are. 

Home is something I'm not sure I'm comfortable talking about. I'll talk about the forbiddens - politics, religion, sex, books, sexuality. I'll tell you I'm a liberal democrat, who's totally okay in the contraceptive aisle of the drug store, who's favorite book is and always will be Catcher in the Rye, believes in peace through literacy and gay marriage. I won't judge you if you're a conservative republican who cringes at the thought of sex education, who loves a great Jane Austen manners novel, who sees the sanctity of marriage as between a man and a woman. But...ask me where I'm from? That's just not dinner table talk, dude. You just don't go there. 

Mostly because your eyes could get stuck in a rolled position. I'm going to tell you I'm from Providence, RI, Charlotte, NC, Forest Hill, MD, The Woodlands, TX, and Shepherdstown, WV. You'll learn how long I lived in each place and my justifications for calling each place my home. Sorry, it's a complicated subject. 

There's a certain beauty in growing up transient. One of the greatest benefits is the bond you form with your nuclear family, the people who are there in each packed and unpacked box and home walkthrough. I wouldn't change anything. I had no permanence, my grandparents didn't live a few blocks away and no one could point to a wall and see how much I had grown between ages 10 and 11. Honestly, it wasn't until middle school that I realized not everyone lived this way. 

People assume that, because of this, it was easy just to pack up the car and move on my own. Yes. Shepherdstown is more "home" in the traditional sense of the word than anyplace else, but those people in that picture weren't there for the move this time, and they're pretty far away. Bad days, during the Shepherd undergrad chapter could be cured with a few hours of driving and a home cooked meal with mom and dad. Those don't happen anymore, and Texas and West Virginia sometimes feel like they couldn't possibly be farther apart. 

So, sometimes, when I'm home, I get homesick. I know this is a part of being a 20-something. I understand. It's like moving from Easy Mac, to the old fashioned butter, milk and powdered cheese mac, to, I don't know, Osso Buco. 

The distance makes this right of passage easier. And, at the risk of sounding really teenage-y and emo...I wish people could understand that a little more. 

I miss my family today. 

20SB Vlog Day!

My first attempt at a vlog. Go easy on me. Also, take notice of the song that plays after "All You Need is Love," it might tie in to yesterday.