One Human’s GRE Experience — Long term study mindset (Part 3)
I work as a software engineer. Hence, my job is cognitively demanding. There’s always something extra I could be doing and performing at a high level requires large amounts of focus, creativity, and concentration. Sometimes I have a true 40 hour workweek but other times I creep into the 50 and 60 hour workweek zones. Occasionally my hours creep even higher than that. Exercise, writing songs with my undergrad roommate (Our group is called Circa 17), and traveling planet earth with my fiancee are also priorities for me. Consequently, I wasn’t able to carve enormous blocks of GRE study time out. What I did instead was adopt a mindset: “I will study as much as possible, as often as possible, as productively as possible. I will not give up until I achieve a 320something.”
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Most weeks looked like the below:
- Wake up early on weekends and study 1–3 hours on Saturday or Sunday or both. Unless I had a crazy busy workweek that required weekend work on both days, I could usually accomplish this. I made sure to relax with friends and family after I finished studying.
- During lower workload workweeks, study 30 minutes to 1 hour in the morning before work
- Do 10–15 minutes of a vocabulary flashcard app at a random point during each day
When traveling, I focused on vocabulary and aimed at doing multiple 10–15 minute sessions per day of a flashcard app.
It’s also important to realize that what you do outside of direct studying is incredibly important for test success. This cannot be overstated. The GRE is a 3+ hour grind where you need to maintain high levels of mental acuity for the full duration of the test to score well. I quickly realized that I needed to drastically level up my life habits to score well on this test. For me, these habits included daily meditation and exercising multiple times a week. It included drastically reducing caffeine, alcohol, and CBD intake. It also included keeping a regular sleep schedule. I failed many times on my journey to cultivate these habits but the slip-ups became fewer and farther between.
Eventually, I reached the point where I’d sleep deeply almost every night and wake up feeling refreshed. I attributed this to keeping a more regular sleep schedule and lowering caffeine usage to 0 most days. I started to feel very peaceful, calm, and clear at random points in the day and I attributed these pleasant surprise moments to daily meditation. I began to experience higher levels of vitality and energy which I attributed to more restful sleep and more consistent exercise. My mind and body were growing like a well nourished plant and I could feel my ability to focus growing each week. If I could go back in time, I would also include occasional journaling, talk therapy, and a meditation retreat (I have brought these experiences into my life since the GRE and it has made a profound difference on my mental and physical health). Experiencing higher levels of mental clarity more frequently made learning new concepts easier, made studying more fun, and allowed me to see the GRE as something larger than just a test.
Improving your mental and physical health is super important for GRE success and I highly recommend examining your life habits as you prepare to take on this beast of a test. In addition to cultivating these habits, I also practiced writing and rewriting the score I felt I was capable of achieving. Read on to see how I brainwashed my mind for success.
