hey now, you're an all star

So basically I pushed GRE prep real hard for 4 days and burnt out for like two weeks. Haha. Following Magoosh was very helpful, but it also made me feel terrible about myself because the first week focused mainly on quant, which sent me into a spiral of self doubt and depression, so.

I still want to use the Magoosh plan as a guide, but I think I’ve found a better way that fits my brain. Magoosh is also lovely and has over 600 quant and verbal. I’ve been doing at least 50 of the vocab questions a day for a few days, until I finish, and then I’ll move onto the vocab questions I have in the books I have. In between I’m doing a few of the quant questions and slowly building myself up to take a practice test so I can see what the distribution is of question types.

It feels kind of silly to me to be doing it this way, when I’m decent at verbal already, but I’m also not at as high of a verbal score that I thought. And when I do the verbal questions, it feels like I improve, even over the course of one session of 50 questions. 

Day 2! I had a bad day yesterday so I just skipped it, since this schedule gives me one day off. Today I did the second day of Magoosh, which was more reading of the Quant section and doing 15 minutes of algebra cards. I’ve been doing vocab cards every chance that I get, but I’m going to try and take the Magoosh advice and read some varied literature too. I also remembered that my friend gave me a copy of the ETS book a few weeks ago so I dug it up out of a box and compared the two. Overall I like the Kaplan book better but i’ll probably use both.

In my intro post I said I’d be studying using Magoosh. I am using their 90 day plan. Today I completed Day 1, sans some of the GRE videos. I think their videos are okay, but the audio quality isn’t great (which is something I notice, i wish I didn’t haha), so I probably won’t be using their videos too often, plus I think you a lot of the stuff in the book I have is just the same. I’m also using the Kaplan test book (because that’s the one I had and I don’t want to buy a new one), so I’m just reading what I think corresponds to the plan.

I think the algebra cards they had are great! I had no idea where to start with re-learning all the math I’ll need, but the cards helped give me a place to start. I recommend for anyone just super confused and not knowing where to go to start.

I also did a round of Quizlet for vocab words, using this set. It seems really complete! As I progress, I’ll make my own set to practice on so I can personalize my experience and get the most out of it. 

Greeting studyblr community!!

My name is Kim and I am a recent graduate with a degree in Communication and Media Studies and a minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. I live in the Seattle area and planning on applying to a Seattle area school at the end of this year. I have overlapping interests in both communication and GWSS, and am hoping to get into one of these programs at my dream school.

I used this studyblr sparingly for my undergrad work but will be using it now as I study in the next few months for the GRE. I’m planning on taking it in Bellingham, Washington in November. If there are any central/north WA studyblrs, say hello!

I’m using Magoosh and a book to study.

She gave me good feedback and we talked for almost an hour. We’ve only met in little chunks of time, so it was nice to have some good time with her, though I’d wish I had met her more throughout the quarter. I gave her a thank you card, and she opened it and read it and seemed really happy that I’d written what I had, so I’m glad I took the time to write something thoughtful. 

She was pleased with my lit review, but thought it could use another draft or two. Which is totally okay, because they’re hard! She gave me specific feedback and we actually talked about our passions. She said that she felt like I was holding back, but she knew that I was mad. And that she wanted to see that come through in my work, that she wanted me to stay mad and articulate it. 

It was a wonderful moment. I wrote that down and it’s on a post it on my computer now. Because I am mad. I am mad about the misogyny and racism on Twitch. I am mad about a million things about the world. I can’t fix everything, but I can work in this space and contribute something. The academic part of it doesn’t erase the passion. It was good timing, because in my previous class we had been discussing academia as activism. And what it’s place was. 

So anyway. It’s a good way to end the quarter. I’m working on the revisions right now and will send those off, and then the next two days I must be an essay writing powerhouse. Almost done. 

Thoughts on my second stream, in which I streamed “Omnibus,” an indie game:

Better than the first. I realized after watching the VOD of my last, the game audio wasn’t coming through. >.> So, that was definitely picked up this time, but the sound was also low. So. Good thing I have a sound guy to figure things out for me! Probably after school ends for the quarter.

Today was a good stream, but I said something I don’t want on my stream. I apologized immediately and it made me start thinking about those little slips and how they breed a community. I am very well aware of what I say and what the words I say mean. I’ve been trying to curb my language, which is a tough thing for me, because, frankly, I curse like a sailor. But I’m trying to run a “professional” stream and one that I can point to in my academic work. Because of that, I need to watch what I say more carefully than if I were during this for leisure. 

It also made me hope that nobody saw me! I said something offensive to a lot of people (”son of a,” for disclosure) that I say in my own life, to myself and those close to me. More and more layers of personal identity keep forming, and that’s something to keep track of.  

The night before I set up OBS Studio by following a guide online: http://nerdordie.com/tutorials/best-obs-studio-settings/

I did a test cast using Town of Salem to check audio. I have a ShureM8 mic arm and a mic arm clamped to my desk, along with a Sennheiser Game Zero headset that I use for my own audio. I tried to set up a recording playback so I could listen to myself speak and adjust accordingly, but the echo came through over OBS. I’m sure there’s a workaround. 

I was intending on playing Crusader Kings 2 for my first cast. Other options were Minecraft and the Division. I ended up not playing Minecraft because I could not log into my account (oops) and didn’t play The Division because, well, I didn’t really feel like it. Crusader Kings 2 ended up crashing every time I opened it, so I ended up playing ANATOMY, by kittyhorrorshow. ANATOMY is an indie horror game and I had been wanting to play it for awhile. It also was only supposed to be around 30-45 minutes, which I thought was good for a first cast. I downloaded it and set it up pretty quickly and then started streaming.

I had one viewer most of the cast, a friend. Later, someone retweeted my tweet about streaming and I ended up with around 10 as I was finishing up. There was some chatter between friends in the chat, but nothing too in depth. I ended about an hour and fifteen minutes after I started.