Well, the midterm is finally over for this week. Even though I merely took two exams, it was a blast since the difficulty of the exams were not that easy at all. Indeed, it was sort of all arduous to study for. One subject was one of my majors, and I had to memorize approximately seven full chapters of "Applied Linguistics". It seemed to be comprehensible at first when the definition of Krashen's Comprehensible Input emerged in the book. As time passed by, I started to realize that comprehensible input was not comprehensive when it was attended to with all the other theories. In other words, I was petrified with all the difficult terms that I had to put into my head. I looked up apparently and virtually every single terminology that I was not acquainted with. And yet still, I could not get every terminology. With those vocabulary that I could not possibly have access to, I just memorized them for the mid-term. There was no choice since I had to take the test with all the other contestants ready to "launch their space shuttles up to the moon"(They were all ready to take the test).
So, for this week, a bunch of rote-learning compared to the usual logical and reasonable English studying that I normally do. One thing I could think of in my head right now? Thank god, it is over...
The mid-term days finally came and I am here writing down what I have to say for this week's studying blog. As for this week, I looked into some of some math problems for the GRE exam. Since the exam was comprised of quantitative reasoning section that counted for about half of it, it was not to be overlooked. So, I drilled in some flip and flop questions that were closely associated with sticking in numbers for some symbolic math figures.
There was this one problem I remember that was neither too hard nor too easy. Here it goes: If a=2 , b=4, c=10 What is a+b/2 - ba/3 + abc-bc? Well, like I say, this one was not that hard or not that easy. Accordingly, I just had to insert the numbers in the places that it belonged. In short, a+b/2 - ba/3 + abc - bc would equal to 2+4/2 - 4*2/3 + 2*4*10 - 4*10=
121/3.
Another one, as far I remember, went something like this. Mary and Tome were baking cookies in two ovens. The oven Mary used had a baking rate of 5 cookies per hour, whereas Tome's oven possessed the baking rate of 8 cookies per hour. If combined, Mary and Tome cook produce how many cookies which were cooked in 22 hours?
A problem like the one above actually drive some people nuts if they were not doing so good back in the high school days or even their junior high school days. I believe there may be some students in the English major. Nonetheless, it was up to me to overcome this arithmetic barrier to go abroad to study in a department that was not so related to studying math literally.( I am thinking of applying to law school, education schools, and business schools). As good news, of course for me, I was okay at math at my high school days, since I majored in architecture before I majored in English education. Going back to the word problem, since they asked how many cookies could be cooked in 22 hours combined, I added the two rates of cooking of Mary's and Tome's oven, which was 13 cookies per hour. (That would be the speed of the two ovens integrated). And since the time was specified as 22 hours, I could have come up with the formula, 13*22=286 cookies.
For this week, I have attended to the analytical reasoning part of the LSAT in preparation for law school. This section of the test has usually 24 problems, and you have to solve them in 35 minutes sharp.
For the past year, I have had difficulty in solving this part of the test. It felt like a stunning and indefatigable IQ test always full of surprises no matter how much you put in to overcome the section.
I remember the days and nights I invested to go through the problems of the so-called 'The GAMES' also referred to as the analytical reasoning which seemed at least to me not analytic at all.
Out of the four forms that they appear in, I was especially weak in "IN AND OUT" part.
To explain, 'In and Out' problems tested your speed and agility in picking up raw information and making it into
tangible set of data from which you could readily come up with a solution.
Describing what the problem was really like, I will briefly go over my study notes for this week. For example, the problem I had trouble with this week was :
There are four crayons that Mary bought for his little brother, Pete. The crayons are as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F.
The rules are as follows:
If A is chosen, B cannot be chosen.
If B is chosen, C is chosen
If C is chosen, E cannot be chosen.
If F is not chosen, A is chosen
Well, as seen from above, they give you these conditions to which you could refer when dealing with a given prompt, or a problem. The problem that I got was, "What is the maximum number of crayons that could be chosen?"
I always found out that I somewhat sped up along the way, making foolish mistakes.
Thus, when I tried to solve this section of the LSAT, I took a deep breath and concentrated on what I could do to maximize the score that I could possibly get for this section. Then, I persuaded myself the most effectual way to get a high score on the analytical reasoning section was to take account of the conditions carefully at first-hand. Other information in the prompt was deemed not that important to me. Mary could be interchangeably shifted to Tom or even Obama. In other words, other information other than the explicit condition was not necessarily that critical. In fact, I could just scan or skim any way that I pleased. As for this problem, it was a pain in the ass.
Every time that I found the expressions 'minimum' or 'maximum', I was in an imminent panic mode, sometimes blurring my memory to the point that I could not even take control of myself. It was true in the real test-taking situation. ( high-stake exams could give you cardiac arrest; disputably) The bottom line, how did I solve this problem? I just did simple math, or arithmetic.
Out of the six crayons, I just started circling "A". Accordingly, since A is chosen, I crossed out B automatically. Then, I thought for a moment. If C was chosen, E cannot be chosen. On the other hand, if E was chosen, then C could not be chosen(due to contraposition). I did not need to cross out F because then I would not get the maximum crayons. So confusing and irritating, but what is the conclusion. If you chose A, B does not get chosen, and if you chose either C or E, one of those two(C and E) must be crossed out. Finally, you have to choose D and F to get the maximum number of crayons. Therefore, the aftermath of it all would be: The chosen crayons would be A, C or E, D, and F, making the maximum number of chosen crayons to be FOUR. Boy, that was hard! Maybe easy, I don't know, but what I know for sure is that it is really a BRAIN-TEASER and if you only have 35 minutes to solve 24 problems, it is never easy. Life goes on.
"Don't Hate Her because She's Successful". This was the cover headline of the TIME magazine that I got for this month's issue.( I ordered the TIME magazine last year to increase my reading comprehension skills). Well, the catch phrase did catch me by surprise, intriguing me as to question myself who this lovely young woman actually was.
At first, I thought she was a politician since TIME portrayed so many politicians as winners both last and this year, including the eminent Obama (president of the U.S.), President Park(the first female president ever in South Korea), and the famous Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.( I got very interested in her for her incessant effort to democratize Burma; I also watched a movie "The Lady" based on a true story of her). Anyhow, going back to whom the woman really was in the cover, she was the COO(Chief Operating Officer) of Facebook. I don't think there is a need to explain Facebook here. Everyone, including myself, knew who the CEO of Facebook was, provided that the movie "Social Network" was such a big hit in the box office world wide.
However, and I mean nonetheless, who would have thought that a non-politician, non-civil rights advocate, and non-CEO would ever appear on the cover of TIME? I would like to make myself clear that I have no prejudice against women, no narrow-mind towards gays, and no discrimination on COO's especially. I was just appalled that TIME does consider woman COO's successful in a world infested with man-CEO's. So what was her name? Her name was Sheryl Sandberg. Yep, not ICEBERG everybody. (Sorry..for the joke) In spite of my habit of screening through the very first page of the magazine, I rushed through the page in which Sheryl Sandberg was introduced. Her personal profile was neatly introduced by starting off with her childhood life and how she aced high school, securing her spot in notorious HARVARD. To me, her childhood experience was inextricably plain, too plain to be true. I am not bragging, but I think my childhood was more exciting(?) than hers.
Yet, her profile of being admitted to Harvard Law School was stunning. It was really an astonishment since I knew the LSAT score (178 out of 180) of those that got into Harvard law. What was more surprising was that she gave up law for business. She transferred to Harvard business school. So far so good. That's what I thought when I kept on reading because I am a guy who believes that prestigious schools cannot completely tell who someone virtually is and what he or she is really made of. He or she also needs to have conscience and integrity to help those who are in desperate need. Okay, I admit. Harvard is amazing. But, and but again, what does she have other than Harvard to be chosen as the one to show up on the cover of TIME out of those thousands and thousands of Harvard graduates? That remained quite a mystery to me until I read about the part after she got her MBA degree from Harvard. She worked for Google and engaged herself in politics by working for the U.S. Department of Treasury. The final niche for her was in Facebook led by Mark Zuckerberg as the CEO. Her peers in Facebook said that she was enthusiastic and ruthless when it came to work. When she was resting and not doing work, she managed other employees by providing them with food when they were hungry and offering them a lively environment so that their efficiency went up. With rigorous work schedule, she never yielded family to work. Instead, she did both. That part to me was a "WOW!" for when my mom was a CEO( She was in the education industry and managed colleges in U.S.) she came home almost at 2 am EVERYDAY. I know more than anyone how hard it is for a woman to do both, even though she is not a leader. Of course, she divorced with her ex-husband, but the status quo was that she was a winner in managing her family and work at the same time. This was indeed amazing to me inside-out. When I finished reading the magazine about Sheryl Sandberg, I concluded that she deserved to be on the cover. After all, who succeeds in rearing one's family and operating a global firm at the same time? We all might think that there may be women around us like Sheryl Sandberg, but in reality, it is finding 'needle in a hay stack'.
For this week, nothing fascinating happened except for that Spring has finally disclosed its wings and was ready for fly. People all over Seoul were coughing, sneezing,
and having trouble adapting to the seemingly everlasting jealousy of Spring. As for me, I did some studying of my own. I, again, attended to some problems in the LSAT. I was obsessed with solving some logical problems that were not so FRIENDLY AT ALL.
Yes, I know that I am not the only one having some problems at least as an organism
living in the phase of the earth. But still, something tells me the game will go on a little bit more longer than any other folks around me. Of course, the game in this context refers to the GAME of playing along with LSAT problems. Accordingly, to get to the bottom line, I digged through a few problems doggedly, and this time, I did not feel as much frustration as I had felt before.
The problems I literally thought over and over were "MUST BE TRUE" questions. These questions were closely linked to finding answers for inference questions, except that they focused more on closing the gap that arose in inference questions. In short, one has to find the best choice that could indeed be inferred from the paragraph or the prompt. I will address some of the problems that I personally had trouble with in finding the answers.
Here goes.
A man had three wives and four children(3 boys and 1 girl). He always went fishing in the weekends with at least 2 of his family members, always including a male. Whenever he went fishing with a girl, he ended up with catching less than 10 fish. Other than that case, he caught more than 10 fish. Last Sunday, he caught less than 10 fish.
What can be inferred?
(a) The man sometimes went fishing with one of the boys
(b) The man almost always caught 10 fish.
(c) One of the three wives could have been included
(d) The man included a male last Sunday
(e) Last sunday, the man took one of his children.
I know what you are going to say reading this blog. What in the ----- is this? Well, that's how I felt when I encountered this problem. It took me a while to figure out what the content virtually was and how it was related to solving this problem. The part where 'including a male' was extremely vague to me, befogging the problem more. After some time, I apprehended that in the man's family, there are basically 4 males( 3 boys and himself). I realized the trick was to fool people by making them think that a male was included, excluding the man himself. If one understands that the man himself is also a male, the problem comes in like a breeze. Obviously, since a male is always, without any exception, included in the fishing trip to somewhere, Thus, even on Sunday, a male will be included since a male is always included. Simply put, the answer is (d). My opinion? Um..after solving some of these somewhat bizarre and make-believe questions, I get worn out. I have to go out for a beer or something, which I never do because it will just affect my health adversely. (If I really do drink a beer every time I solve LSAT problems)
But one thing is for sure. I am improving, though gradually. Maybe that's what matters the most: the fact that I am developing.
Well, the midterm is finally over for this week. Even though I merely took two exams, it was a blast since the difficulty of the exams were not that easy at all. Indeed, it was sort of all arduous to study for. One subject was one of my majors, and I had to memorize approximately seven full chapters of "Applied Linguistics". It seemed to be comprehensible at first when the definition of Krashen's Comprehensible Input emerged in the book. As time passed by, I started to realize that comprehensible input was not comprehensive when it was attended to with all the other theories. In other words, I was petrified with all the difficult terms that I had to put into my head. I looked up apparently and virtually every single terminology that I was not acquainted with. And yet still, I could not get every terminology. With those vocabulary that I could not possibly have access to, I just memorized them for the mid-term. There was no choice since I had to take the test with all the other contestants ready to "launch their space shuttles up to the moon"(They were all ready to take the test). 
