Testy

Today featured the first test of my reborn academic career, and it wasn't easy. The questions themselves weren't too bad, but I wrote one down incorrectly and came up with a really strange answer. I knew it was strange, you see, because I happened to prove that exponents were completely useless. I went back and reworked this like 5 times, and each time I got that you could raise any number to any power and the answer would always be 1. Coincidentally, this would mean the square root of every number is 1, so all numbers have to be equal to 1, etc. You can see why this would be a troubling result on a math exam, particularly when I have first-hand knowledge of numbers like 2, 3, 4, and 5. I kept coming up with the same result, though. Just as I was about to strut into the math department and tell the chair he was a chump because I disproved his entire field, I looked at the exam again and realized that I had written the problem down incorrectly. Yeah, so good news, everyone: I have verified the existence of numbers larger than 1.

I always dread exams, not because of the difficulty of the questions, but because I very rarely do the right questions. I'll either skip questions inadvertently, or I'll write the wrong problem down. The worst occasion was in a math course in college when I happened to write the first problem down incorrectly. The way I wrote it down, it was way, way harder than what was on the exam. So, instead of doing a little 8-step proof like I was supposed to, I ended up with something that was like 80 steps long. I finished just as the exam was over, thus leaving me with the distinction of being the only person in the history of academics to turn in a test where the only problem attempted wasn't even on the test. And somehow, I thought continuing my studies was a good idea.

All of this is a moot point, of course. By the times these exams are graded, I'll have much larger concerns, like trying to translate into Spanish the phrases "I am in urgent need of a urologist" and "Release me from this cell, and you can marry my sister". Good Lord willing, I'll be back on Monday with some stories, both kidneys, and hearts of many adoring senoritas.