Gradually Reduced Eskimo

Leaning against the 10th Edition of the GRE book, I am resolving the last equation of the day: if x= 0, √x= 0. When you're lame, you're lame, and that's easy math right there.

Today, my friends, I took my first GRE class and learned... how to make a division! Yeah, and let me tell you this was a painful experience. If I hadn't already had a brake down this afternoon because the Austrian Consultate left its doors shut despite my insistent knocking, paper invitation for tonight's cocktail in hand (the paper read: Sturdel party. I had brand new dentures on, ready to mingle with the 70 something years old nobility's finest veterans) I would have cried a river of embarrassment.

I can recognize Ghanaian Ashanti stools, Nias Lwölö Guardian Figures, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattvas from the Northern Qi era, or a fake Monet (by lifting the frame,) but I can't freaking divide. To that, add (not divide) the fact that I am slightly dyslexic (left/right, north/south, "b" and "p", are all the same to me.) Imagine my tutor's -and my- amazement when I struggled in the BASIC REVIEW section of the book. p.4, that is, right after the credits. Why is the remainder of a division put over the divisor? If it represents the left over, how come it comes first when you look at the whole thing? That might be a detail to you, but we, Ze French, learned it differently. The right way I believe, and I already sucked at it back then.

Why am I even taking the test, you might ask? Because I am applying to Grad school. Again. 1.5 Masters, 2 Art History theses, and I am going for another diploma (although here, in the US.) I want to feel the warm atmosphere of school again, discern the soft scratch of blue, green, purple and yellow fountain pens as they engrave on expensive paper that the "before the after-war" was a productive artistic era (did he mean "during the war" ??)
I want to rediscover the smell of rancid cold tobacco outside of the amphitheater as I leave the sweaty classroom to breathe some fresh air. I want to be transported to the Middle Ages Royal Courts again, cradled by the soft voice of a"Gothic art" tenured reciting the "Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry" in Latin, to the beat of a badly tuned mandolin. (Education is free in France and the academic selection is made by endlessly failing the students until they forfeit. So try to spot the depressed 5th year freshman playing mandolin in a room of 500+, under the glow of slides showing antique ruins long turned into Disneyworld's attractions.)

And above all, I miss cheating on my neighbor’s mid-term paper, herself looking at an outdated and therefore erroneous book barely hidden on her lap. I want to feel my heart jump again, as the examiner unseals the final exam's question taken randomly over 4000 years of art History, (the one that will determinate if you are worthy of finally becoming a Sophomore) :"Define Opus Caementicium", "-you have 4 hours."

Yes, I miss all of that. So, what am I doing instead of practicing the GRE? Another blog entry. I guess I could also just watch re-runs of "Saved by the Bell" and call it a career.