Brain Sucker!; or Studying for the GRE's

So I still have lots to write about, and I probably will get to it all, but these past few weeks most of my brain power has been consumed studying for the GRE's, which I take in about two weeks. More specifically, all my brain power has been consumed studying for the Math section, because ohmigod. I have two major problems, and the first at least is something everyone goes through which is that all the math in the GRE is stuff I haven't cared or thought about in at least six years, the hardest math is stuff I learned to do in Algebra 2, or sophomore year of High School so I am groping to remember all these equations and processes that I haven't used in forever, and not to mention all the little math facts, like how one isn't a prime number and crap about dividing fractions. I think practice will iron that out so I bought a workbook, which in the true spirit of test prep was heinously overpriced.

My second problem is deeper and more vexing, which is that the GRE doesn't allow the use of even the simplest calculator and I never learned my multiplication tables past three (well, I learned five), and even that mostly involves me doing some of addition in my head. I don't know if I've mentioned it but I am actually extremely dyslexic. I wasn't actually expected to learn how to read at all, but I did, well below grade level until fifth grade when they had this book contest in school where you got points for every book you read and take a little quiz on, and harder books were worth more. My smug little neighbor boy used to come over and taunt me about what books he was reading and how he was going to win the thirty dollar gift certificate to Book Stop that I so coveted. I read every book he did plus one at the same level for each and ended up getting three times as many points as he, my nearest competitor in the school, did and by the end of it I could read at a tenth grade level. My brain had somewhere along the way rewired itself so as to compensate for the dyslexia and now I probably wouldn't be able to test as dyslexic if I tried (inconvenient as the GRE is the first reason I've ever had to want to). The result of this is that during elementary school I couldn't do Math. I was lucky in some schools to have teachers and principals who understood and one year I was even put in the gifted math program where they were working with non-written math systems like Sumerian clay tablets and abacuses (maybe I should ask the GRE people if I could bring in an abacus). Since the problem was writing I did really well at that. Third grade however was terrible, like always, I was in a new school and the previous year I had been in gifted math and I was failing math in my new teacher's class and for some reason she was rather convinced I was doing it just to spite her, since I could obviously do math if I was in the gifted program. The way she taught us multiplication tables was to get us to memorize them then we had one minute to work out a sheet of multiplication problems, first all the ones times table, then two, then three. We only got a new number when we finished the previous one and I spent two months on three and never passed four. I only finished three when I learned I could add three to the previous number (so I got 2*3=6, then added 3 for the answer nine to the next slot and eventually I figured out how to do all that addition in under a minute). So I wasn't even exposed to the multiplication tables above four, five is easy so I quickly learned that one, and somewhere along the line someone explained to me that any number times nine is that number times ten minus itself so I usually get those right but for most numbers I just have to add them up. So to figure out 8*8 for instance I will remember that 8*5=40, then add 8 to that 3 more times, or 6*7 has me thinking, 3*7 is 21 and 2*3 is six, so 21 plus 21 is forty two. Which is the sort of lateral math thinking that the GRE, in theory, rewards. As should be no real surprise with multistep problems that require lots of multiplication and division, all I have to do is make one simple mistake and I am sunk on a problem I completely understand and know how to do. It's like being in third grade all over again, where I understand the math, I know what it means and how to do it, but the numbers mess me up and so I worry that I am going to get a terrible score and not be able to get into a grad school for Library Science where I will only ever need to do the simplest of math and never be denied a pocket calculator (with which I am perfectly capable of doing really hard, tricky, complex math because the sad and horrible fact is that I am actually very good at math, but terrible with numbers). Maybe I should just give up this Library thing and become a street busker.