Gabbro B-Sides

So I filed into an appendix of a hotel lobby, sat on an uncomfortable and not-very-stylish chair, and listened to fifty questions about stuff. I answered some of them, and may even have gotten a few correct. What disappoints me, though, isn’t that I failed the preliminary test - I knew that was going to happen. I’m disappointed because I failed to write down “Joan Jett” as the answer to all the ones I missed, and because I didn’t steal any of the hotel water glasses so fetchingly arrayed at the back of the room. Silly me.

I left with two questions. Maybe one of you can tell me the answers.

1. Why were there so few women trying out? I didn’t think to count, but the ratio was noticeably worse than any graduate physics course I’ve accidentally barged in on. The program itself, of course, is pretty well balanced, so I always assumed that the tryouts would be as well.
2. What’s the threshold score for making it into the contestant pool? I was expecting an evil professor-style test, where the high score just barely cracks 60%, but that’s not what I got.

My friend did indeed make it into the “contestant pool;” while he did the interview, the rest of us sat around in the lobby playing Set and doing homework, so I can’t tell any fun stories about that. I would have maybe tried to sit in, but there was one of those women doing the organizing who yelled like she was excited all the time and I hate that. She scared the utter crap out of me.

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