A journey towards the Great American Dream - Part 1

I have lived in Madras(I hate the word Chennai BTW) all my life, was born and brought up there.I don't know exactly when but probably sometime when I was in school I decided that I had to go to the US to study.There were shining examples for me to emulate/look up to like my paternal cousins who had followed their dreams to the US and are still in the US even today.I don't want to sound clichéd but I wanted to experience a different way of living, gain more exposure and be independent(not just from a financial standpoint alone.) most of all. I found that I hated it to ask my parents for money to spend for all my expenses when I was in college.Unfortunately, there was no other way out then, my net income until the year 2006(The year I graduated from college and came to the US) was zip, zilch and zero.So anyway to not digress too much,the preparations started.

The 1st major turning point in the journey was the GRE.A great GRE score was key in obtaining admission to a top university. So obviously I got the GRE BIBLE Barrons. Going through some 4k words in Barrons was a prerequisite to cracking the GRE, but I was hoping there would be a better way to learn some 4k words, my cousin Vignesh helped me out by giving me the book Norman Lewis-Word power made easy.It was such a delightful book that once you finish reading through the book, learning the thousands of words in Barrons was so much more easier.There was the Analytical writing section and the quantitative section too in the GRE, but I wasn't too much worried about those as the quantitative section was pretty basic and I used to write good essays once upon a time.(This blog unfortunately might be more of a testament to my eroded writing skills though.)

So the preparations went on in full swing and the day of the GRE dawned. I made my way to the Test center in Nungambakkam and started the test.The Verbal section was an absolute cakewalk except for the reading comprehension section which was tricky.But the shocker was the quantitative section,a combination of various things when I was halfway through the quants section made me think that I had blown a major chance I had to get a great GRE score after getting through the verbal section in flying colors(Note the American way of spelling colors here,smirk.) by horribly messing up my quants score, considering a perfect score of 800 was the norm in the quants section, it was downright depressing. I felt sick to the stomach in the middle of the quants section with time running out.My great American dream was being cut short even before it had a chance to begin.I then decided that I might as well minimize the damage to my score and got through the rest of the quants section managing to do much better with the remaining questions, and the section was then soon done. I was expecting a score of 650-680 on 800 in the quants section which was way below par. I hurriedly typed in a few paragraphs in the optional Analytical Writing Section and submitted the test as I was in desperate anxiety to see my GRE score. It was the same feeling I had before I viewed my board exam results during the 10th and 12th standards. And the first important turning point in the journey was in front of my eyes on the computer screen, I had a GRE score of 1520/1600 with 780 in quants and 740 in Verbal.I was stunned, and then exhilarated that all the hard work and preparation had paid off.There are a few moments in life, when you experience unbridled happiness, this was certainly one of those moments for me especially considering how I was feeling an hour ago.

I don't want to sound preachy but I thus got the first taste of an important maxim in life which was to repeat over and over and over with varying degrees in diverse scenarios in my life: Things can go so utterly and horribly wrong time and time again in life that often it would seem like there is no solution in sight but ultimately in the end everything works out very well, Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger and whatever happens happens for a reason and if you put in your best effort and have faith in god, you will succeed no matter what. And so my journey continued towards the Great American dream with me having no inkling at all at that point of the storms that would soon rage in my path from here on.

The journey to be continued in the next post....