I assume that you meant we were to come up with something worse than taking the GRE?  Here's my story.

When I was about 17, I drove a 1967 VW bug.  I was at a friend's hous late one night, when a drunk driver plowed into it, destroying the left rear fender.  One of the nice things about VW bugs was that they were easy to work on, so I went and found a replacement fender and proceeded to remove the damaged fender and install the new one.  The fender is held on by a series of bolts that go through tabs in the fender on the underside.  While tightening a bolt on the new fender, the wrench slipped, and I jammed the knuckle of the ring finger of my right hand into one of the aforementioned tabs.  I laid back a rather sizable flap of skin, as well as damaging some of the joint cartilage.  This of course necessitated a trip to the emergency room, where they taped up the cut and put my figner in a splint.  You might think this is bad, but it actually gets worse.

     The day after this incident, I was going to the beach with family and friends.  One of our favorite pastimes at the beach was body surfing, and the question arose as to whether it was prudent to body surf with an open wound on my finger.  I don't know how many of you are aware that seawater is one of the most UNsanitary substances on the face of the planet.  It's full of microbes, germs, fish feces, etc.  Anyway, being a reckless 17 year old, I bought a couple of condoms, and put them over my finger while I body surfed.  Had a fun day.

     Early the next morning, I awoke with a severe throbbing in my finger.  It was swollen around the tape the doctor had placed on it.  So swollen in fact that I couldn't cut the tape off to relieve the pressure.  This of course necessitated a second  trip to the emergency room where the doctors had to pry open the healing cut to drain the infection that had been caused by the exposure to seawater.  I still have a scar and a slight deformation of that knuckle.

    I think the scars from taking the physics GRE might be deeper, though ;).

Dave

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value -- Albert Einstein

GPA...I hate that I'm connected to that little bitty number forever

-al

They should do away with the GREs and look at the research the student has done.

Here's a few that I think describe GREs pretty well:

Gruesomely Raw Experience

Getting Ridiculous Equations

Getting Refraction Errors


;)

Post removed on April 14, 2012 at 7:29 PM EST.

well, i have to take the general GRE in a matter of weeks  
and the physics GRE this coming november, so my innovative suggestion is to just not have the GREs :)

i often think to myself, someone who has always done well in class but done poorly on bubble tests and the like that if only there were a way to measure one's genuine interest or passion i would get a leg up on my relatively mellow classmates that are bubble-test-savy. the GRE is a computer adaptive test nowadays, at least the general one is, so why not hook up a polygraph-like passionate-o-meter. it's my opinion that a 3.0 GPA student that is absolutely in love with the subject will do better than an uninspired unhappy 4.0.  so there ya go, i suggest the passionate-o-meter.

-wc

God's Really Evil