I took the GRE yesterday, and it wasn't too bad. The hotel I was staying at was about a 10 minute walk from the GRE testing place and I only had to cross two crazy roads, so my life was only partially in danger. The official check-out time of the hotel was 10am and my test was at 12:30pm, so that would have left a lot of time for me to do nothing. I talked to the desk and got them to put the check-out time at 11 and then I actually left around 11:30. I went to the testing place and they said no problems, and started signing me in. Then the lady says "ok, follow me and bring your things and you may begin." I was kind of hoping I would get to start early and not just have to wait doing nothing for an hour, but was still a bit surprised when she said that. We went down the hall a little ways and then registered at the master computer where they took my picture via a web cam. It was a really bad picture, but she said it was good enough. I don't know how they even figured it was me, but hopefully it will be good enough.
The actual testing room had three computers against the far wall from the door. They were separated by wood frames to provide a private work space and there was a camera at the back of the room which showed all three stations. I was on the end and there was all ready someone taking a test at the middle station. While he is taking his test, the lady leads me in and starts explaining things to me, and this guy is in the middle of his test. Maybe it wasn't distracting, but I thought it was a bit weird. I'm glad we didn't wait till he was done though because he either wasn't taking the GRE or he started really late because he didn't finish until an hour or so before I did. I thought he would have been done by 12:30 but was wrong, so kudos to the rude lady for getting me started while he was still testing.
The room had some windows on one side and some of them were open, but most of them could not open because they were just solid glass. There was a fan too, but it was still really hot. I should have worn shorts, but I didn't.
The exam itself is all computer based and wasn't too bad. The English part was not very nice to me, but it was what I was expecting. The only real bad part of the experience was when the power went out. They had a battery back-up system for the computers so I didn't lose where I was, but the testing lady had to turn my computer off until the generator kicked in. It took about 5 minutes, and in that 5 minutes, it got really hot really fast because the fan wasn't on. the other downside of it was I only had 2 more questions left on the whole exam, so it was like "you couldn't wait another 10 minutes for me to finish and tell the computer which school to send my scores to?" but oh well. We can't really control when the power goes out.
Oh, I lied. there was another bad part too, and that was on the bus ride from Kampala to Jinja when I realized I did one of the math problems wrong. That was disappointing since I was just sitting there and it popped into my head saying "you idiot, what were you thinking?"
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