today and tomorrow is the 2 day extravaganza known as written quals. this is a 2 day test that's supposed to be your chance to prove you know the material from first year classes exceedingly well. if you don't pass the first try (fall of your 2nd year), you have to pass on the 2nd try or your out of the program.
a little on scoring to make the rest of my current rant slightly more comprehensible. today from 9am til noon, we had 9 problems. we had to do the first 3, and got to choose 3 of the remaining 6. same format tomorrow. each problem you do gets graded on a scale from 0 to 10 points. generally getting 70 or more points over the 2 days guarantees you pass.
today, i felt good leaving the test (i turned in 5, 3 of which i felt moderately good about), but as happens for everyone, once you start discussing problems with other people you realize silly mistakes or start second guessing yourself... for that reason, i'll say i got 1 problem for sure, and will not bet on anything else.
if you want to see the kind of fun they put us through.... this morning's half of the exam looked like this:
after that fun, at least i can be thankful that my math guys take care of me... as soon as i got home from the test, scott IMed me to ask what people were doing for the rest of the day, with a "p.s. i really want to go on a road trip!"... of course i was game, and although leigh, colleen, eric, and jared passed it up, ben came with us,.... me, scott, and ben on a day trip -- as if we don't have enough stories of the 3 of us already from the rest of the summer....
one hitch... so i was supposed to pick up scott and have him read stop that ball to me before we picked up ben, who was running some errands on campus -- we had a great time with the book, it was our first time to read it... however, leaving scott's house, i, in my tired state from waking up every 45 minutes from how hot our apartment was last night, backed straight into their mailbox... the mailbox was at an angle, and scott fixed it, but otherwise ok... the spoiler on the back of my car now has a deep 4-5 inch gash through the paint job... thankfully the spoiler is plastic and not metal, so although it looks retarded, it won't rust. anyhow, after that event, we decided ben was in charge of driving for the day (in my car), and i was in charge of switching out the CDs :-P...
we had no plan other than to head north, which we did... we took 287 (the biggest interstate loop around NYC, up to the last new york exit before a toll to cross the hudson, then chose an arbitrary highway to go from there... we ended up at a state park around a lake with a lot of swans and just chilled, happy to be away from the math building, until it looked like a major storm was about to start...
then, we took the long way back to jersey, dealing with added traffic on account of the republican convention starting on top of regular rush hour = absolutely insane... we stopped for slurpees at a 7-11 halfway back (scott had never had a slurpee EVER before! -- weird wisconsin boys....), and then they treated me to dinner at the diner that has the best cheesecake in jersey before we all went back home... it was a quality day; if nothing else, just good to get away from math for awhile.
now, here it is midnight, and my apartment is still sweltering hot -- and this is me, who has the only room with a ceiling fan, and it's been on max speed for the past week! -- .. up in 7 hours to do the same 9-noon fun... only this time i'll be done with it in 12 hours, and in 24, or at most 48, i should know the outcome.... dum dum dum.
we shall see.
night.
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