Sarcasm with a side of optimism.

Dog:Woof , Cat: ??

Mom is going back to school for a PhD which means a lot of senseless suffering in my book, but to each their own! She has been out of school for a while now, and needs to take the GRE or the MAT as part of the application requirement. I've never heard of the MAT, but that's what she's opting for. It's the Miller Analogy Test, and it sounds trivial at first, but it's frickin hard. It's the kind of thing where you either know it or you don't.

Cutting and pasting: "The Miller Analogies Test (MAT) is an analytic ability test utilizing analogy problems. Primarily verbal analogies are tested, but a few quantitative analogies will also be on the MAT. There are a total of 100 partial analogies that must be completed in 50 minutes.

The MAT will test your ability to determine relationships between words, mastery of the English language, and a general knowledge of fine arts, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, and science."

The sample analogies online seem trivial, like the following:

SPRING : RING :: COIL : (a. rope, b. loop, c. cowl, d. stretch)

But then, you'll get one like this:

(a. Rembrandt, b. Dalí, c. Cassatt, d. Matisse) : MONET :: WHISTLER : CÉZANNE

So if you don't know who those guys are, you're screwed.

Turns out there were a lot like those, so Mom calls me last night in a panic thinking that she's stupid. She tests me, I fail. She feels better. I reinforce that this is the kind of thing where you either know it or you don't, and that makes studying very difficult. So in a mean spirited way, I send her the following email in response to her concerns:

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Mom-
btw, you're not stupid.

rock is to millipede as
a) banana is to centrifuge
b) box is to phonebook
c) diamond is to laptop
d) lobster is to file
-v
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What is the answer??? Is it diamond to laptop????? where did you get
that? the practice test?

i am so f--ked

-Mom

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mom, i made that shit up.

relax.

posted by v @ 11:27 AM