Pressure's on?
I guess I've been picking up slight "you've been here for a pretty long time and haven't gotten much done" vibes lately. It's the start of my 4th year of grad school, and I may or may not have recently passed my last of three qualifying exams. I felt pretty borderline about it, and there's one problem I didn't answer which I really should've been able to do but didn't just because the suck had me.
Anyway, they're sort of slow grading this one, so in the mean time, I had a dream about it. In the dream, I go to Barbara's office to ask if the scores are in yet, and she says, "yes, hold on. Let me look." And then she shuffles through a file drawer and says, "yes. It says here that... you failed exponentially".
The first thing I thought was, "failed EXPONENTIALLY? I was BORDERLINE! If I failed, it was just by a little bit! I didn't fail EXPONENTIALLY!"
The second thing I thought was "wait, what does that even mean? Fail exponentially? It's nonsense."
Then the third thing I thought was, "Man, I really suck. I bet the only reason I even got into the department in the first place is because I'm an atheist."*
* - Dr. Zhou, the graduate director at the time I was admitted to MSU, taught PDE this last Spring. It turns out that he's got a bit of an antibiblical streak of his own. One day halfway through the semester, he asked apropos of nothing, "well, how do we know whether this converges? You can't find out in the Bible, so forget about that".
Anyway, they're sort of slow grading this one, so in the mean time, I had a dream about it. In the dream, I go to Barbara's office to ask if the scores are in yet, and she says, "yes, hold on. Let me look." And then she shuffles through a file drawer and says, "yes. It says here that... you failed exponentially".
The first thing I thought was, "failed EXPONENTIALLY? I was BORDERLINE! If I failed, it was just by a little bit! I didn't fail EXPONENTIALLY!"
The second thing I thought was "wait, what does that even mean? Fail exponentially? It's nonsense."
Then the third thing I thought was, "Man, I really suck. I bet the only reason I even got into the department in the first place is because I'm an atheist."*
* - Dr. Zhou, the graduate director at the time I was admitted to MSU, taught PDE this last Spring. It turns out that he's got a bit of an antibiblical streak of his own. One day halfway through the semester, he asked apropos of nothing, "well, how do we know whether this converges? You can't find out in the Bible, so forget about that".