Testing her Patience: Aging Intellectual Defies Barnes & Noble Cashier
Against all advice to the contrary, Kate Callahan bought the Princeton Review GRE practice book.
“So there,” said the 34-year-old, who currently works for a non-profit, with a nervous laugh.
It was on a recent Wednesday that Ms. Callahan, who hasn’t taken a test in almost 15 years, went to her local Barnes & Noble to pick up a book on how to crack the Graduate Record Examination, better known as the GRE.
“I wanted to get the Kaplan one, because it had a pretty cover,” said Ms. Callahan, who dreams of ditching her work helping the homeless for office hours, a leafy quad, and affairs with 19-year-olds. “But then I started looking at the Princeton Review one, and it had a DVD that came with it, and I don’t know. It just felt right.”
So Ms. Callahan took it to the cashier while her boyfriend looked at the new Heath Ledger book—especially the pictures of Michelle Williams in a bikini—on the New Releases table. But she was shocked when, after the cashier asked her if she had a super savings card, he told her she was buying the wrong book.
“You don’t want this,” Ms. Callahan remembers him saying. “What do you need a DVD for? You want the Kaplan book. That’s the best one. That’s the one I used.”
Ms. Callahan said she walked back over to the testing books to make the exchange, but then thought better of it.
To be sure, Ms. Callahan is not the first wannabe-academic who has chosen the Princeton Review book over the Kaplan book. But in an age when viral marketing is of the utmost importance and the need for overeducated Gender and Sexuality studies is, perhaps, at an all-time low, her refusal to take the B&N cashier’s word is particularly notable.
And yet, Ms. Callahan said, her decision makes sense.
“I mean, if he used the Kaplan book and he’s now a cashier at Barnes & Noble, what does that say about the Kaplan book,” she asked rhetorically, her cheeks turning bright red.
She said she stalked up to counter and insisted on the Princeton Review book.
“Have fun as an adjunct at a community college in Ohio,” she reported the cashier saying, meanly.
