hm, puzzling

just got the official scores from my GRE take one. this is weird, i can't explain it. in verbal unlike what i had said earlier, i walked out with a 710, 97th percentile. but when it comes to quantitative, i got a 550 and was only 36th percentile. written part was so-so, i ended up better than half of the people who took it.

i wonder if it's possible to redo just the one section; the thing is i know i can do better and i'm not sure if it was nerves, mental exhaustion (which is unlikely b/c i got enough sleep and had only just finished the written part - the verbal was last) or something else. i initially blamed it on "brain atrophy;" it's been some time since i've taught math or mentally reviewed the basics, and generally have not been working with math. plus when i studied the math section pre-exam, i worked with the example problems when i think i probably should have been working from the ground up. not that i'd need to learn anything new, i'd just need to get the engine started.

and part of it was nerves. if i came to a problem i felt would take too much time, i guessed and went on to the next because i was worried about not having enough time to finish all problems. i ran out of time on most of the practice math sections that i did.

i think i'm going to take it again and focus my studies on math. not that i can breeze through the other two parts, but the gre math problems aren't calc problems, they're reasoning problems. so if i up my math reasoning abilities, i think in general the rest will stay strong/improve.

hm.