It's been a long hard road but working on recovery

A good friend told me yesterday, it's not always enough to just memorize what you need to pass the test, but if this is what you really want, really where your heart lies, you won't just memorize things to just pass the test; you need to actually KNOW it, learn it, want it bad enough.

He used the metaphor of jumping hurdles, it's not enough to just focus on the next hurdle you have to focus on winning the race.

I think this is one of the best pieces of advice i've ever received, and it really hit me in the face like a south bound truck going 90 miles an hour.

I've realized that I tend to half-ass everything I do. In high school, I did only just what was minimally required to get the passing grade. In college, my first year, I couldn't even tell you what classes I took, what we studied or who my teachers were. I didn't do so hot that year, but all was forgiven when I increased things about 10% to make the C or the B, if the class was easy enough, I'd get an A, but I stuck mostly in the B average range and graduated in that range. I believe now, that if I had actually given my all, given everything I could give I would have done much much better, and probably wouldn't have such a hard time with the GRE test.

That good friend I mentioned early, sent me a text message this morning that said "the minute you quit justifying and call a duck a duck, it goes a lot smoother." In context to the above and the GRE test, I blame my not doing so well on the GRE due to the fact that I am dyslexic and was pulled out of my language arts classes in grade school to go to language science, where instead of learning vocabulary, root words, prefixes/ suffixes and the works, we learned Apple-a (soft 'a', you make the sound) Apron- A (hard 'a') We were learning phonetics and not meanings. As I reread this text message over and over, I thought of this excuse I was giving and not taking responsibility for the fact that it's not my schools fault, or my language science teacher's fault for not teaching us root woods, but phonetics instead, it's my fault for not giving my all to studying when I knew that this stuff was going to be on the test, and never learned it in grade school. I should have worked five times harder than everyone else who was taught language arts, took latin, and who are fluent in spanish and french; but I didn't, therefore now my grades are justified.

Next time, I'll do it bigger, better, and harder than everyone else, then when I know I have truly given 110%, my all, my whole heart and soul into the test, and if I still don't do as well as I hope, I won't cry, I won't beat my self up and question my future. Because I'll know I did the very damn best I could and that's that.

I am just about finished with my critical essay. I would like to post it on here, but I think I will wait until after I have been accepted so no one will plagiarize it or know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody at one the school's I am applying for and who knows something could happen that because I posted it and it might ruin my chances of getting into a certain school. I have 8 pages, 8 laborious, thorough, mind boggling pages about 18th century marriages.

UTA is looking pretty good, I think I have a solid chance at KSU, CU is pretty much out, CSU- I'm still trying to read them, UNT- they require 10 to 15 pages of the essay, I'm not so sure I can produce more coherent pages that keep the essay focused, but we'll see.

I hope you believe in me.