moving to antarctica... effective immediatel-- well, asap maybe

let's talk about fears.

i'm afraid of the wall-sized mirror in my dining room after dark when the lights are out.

that's a silly fear, that i can easily talk myself out of.

i'm afraid of pushing shopping carts at stores.

that's an annoyance that i've let grow into an irrational fear because people are willing to humor me and push the shopping cart instead when i need to buy lots of stuff at once.

i'm afraid of dying in a car wreck in the rain.

that's a fear that's grown from enough people i know having had that happen, that everytime i'm out driving in the rain it fills my mind... what can i do? be a cautious driver, and not much else.

those fears are all well and good... give them as much or as little credit as you want... but they're all circumstantial, and in the end,...
* my mirror can't hurt me...
* having a weird thing about not pushing shopping carts and just buying a few things at a time when i'm at the store by myself isn't going to affect my life for better or for worse...
* and driving in the rain,... if you're cautious, that's all you can do to help with that... if i really wanted to i could just stop driving in the rain full stop forever, right?

but let's talk about huge life-changing fears...

i have several of these too...
i'm afraid of being alone in the long run
i'm afraid i'll never get out of debt
and, what concerns me most this week: i'm worried that in the near future i'll get a major sign that what i've been aiming to do with my life for the past 6 years is all to waste and that i'm really not qualified for it at all.

in case you haven't gathered, in a week, i will be taking my written qualifying exam... i am a 2nd year ph.d. student in math at rutgers. the first step towards getting a ph.d. at just about any school is to pass a written qualifying exam to show you know the basics of first year course material. this past august, i and all the other students who entered the program when i did, took the test for the first time. 4 of us failed. many professors, fellow students, and others attributed my failing at least in part to the fact that i attended a funeral the week before the exam and had a moderately stressful summer; although it was partially a nice cover at the time, it also frustrated me, because honestly, even if my summer hadn't been that stressful, i honestly don't believe i knew enough material at the time to have been able to pass the exam. heck, i take the thing again in a week and i still don't think i know enough material to pass.

all fall, the 4 of us who failed worked with a phenomenal analysis professor to learn how to solve analysis problems that may or may not appear on the exam. we learned a lot, and he claims he has faith in us to pass.

all fall, i've been working sporadically between homework for my actual classes to learn how to do other problems and learn other concepts for the test, and math friends who have seen me working claim they have faith in me to pass.

all fall, i've been many things (both good and bad) to many people outside the program, and they said "if you can so determinedly do (fill in the blank), i have faith you can do anything, including pass this test"

truth is, to have failed it once, and failed it badly, i've felt kinda insufficient to be in this program all year... heck, i've felt insufficient to be here most of the previous year too.... people can tell me all they want that they have such faith in me, but really, until you've lived with the demons in my head, you don't understand how frustrating it is to hear that when (a) i don't believe it myself, and (b) i know there's an equally likely if not greater chance that i still could fail the darn thing again in a week.
(this is not to invalidate compliments... let me make it extraordinarily clear that i love the support and love i get from so many people and the sentiment is greatly appreciated... but there's a hard-to-precisely-define line between appreciating the sentiment and appreciating the gesture expressing the sentiment -- still not phrased quite right... parenthetical remark is just to say that you shouldn't feel dissed if you've complimented me or told me you have faith in me in the last week after you just read the above paragraph, even though you probably feel that way anyhow).

if i fail next week, does that make me a bad person? no

will i feel like crap? freakin yes

what does it mean? it means that i have devoted the past 6 years since graduating high school to the study of higher mathematics with the goal of doing research and/or teaching others about math. if i fail next week, the general rule at rutgers is two chances and then you're out of luck, and thus, even with undergrad successfully completed, the past two years of my life will have amounted towards nothing... two years of struggling to learn analysis and other fun concepts, only to have less than six months to find a new life plan... having been hooked on to this one for so long, despite how the most recent two years of it have completely ruined what little self esteem i had at the start, i really have no idea what an alternate plan would be. somehow, in the last semester, i've managed to impress a professor enough to have him ask to be my future advisor. if i fail again, i'd be all the more humiliated in that, why would a professor want a student that has failed multiple times in passing the litmus test of knowledge of the first year courses, when there's even harder stuff to come.
in the end, this doesn't come down to being just a stupid test that doesn't reflect who i am anyhow... this comes down to a question of if i can prove myself capable of doing something i've devoted 25% of my life to. the fact that that all comes down to 6 hours next week that i still don't feel very prepared for, despite a week of nearly non-stop study this week, and quite a bit of work before that is rather frustrating.

if i somehow manage to pass next week, does that make me a good person? not really

will i be ecstatic? actually, probably not... i'll probably still be equally angry that grad school involves hoops that completely undermine what little self-esteem the average graduate student has. perfectly smart and qualified people come in to programs like this, and with few exceptions learn to call themselves stupid several times a day and learn to focus on all that they don't know and can't do rather than who they are and what they do bring to the table... either that or they're the top 5% who outshine the rest without trying... or they're egomaniacs who can't admit when they screw up... complaints about others aside, even if i pass, i will probably be exhausted that so much energy and tears have gone into something that has so undermined my view of self that i still won't want to rejoice about it.

all that said, what do i want?

(1) i don't want people to tell me "i have faith in you" and/or "i know you can do it" with specific regard to the qual
fact: in this case, i really DON'T know i can do it until i see it happen, and furthermore, if you don't know the math and don't have a sincere estimation of how well i know it, you can't really have an estimation of how i'll do on the test... don't take it personally, but in the end, all the "i have faith in you"'s add up to me feeling i've disappointed even MORE people in the event i don't do well

(2) i want someone to just give me a hug, listen to me cry, and validate that the above is a real fear and that my head will be a mess for the next week, and probably for a bit more, and that that's ok -- i don't want people to try to change my attitude... i want them to listen and acknowledge that how i feel is ok... i want people who talk to me to acknowledge that the issue at hand isn't just lara and a test that will be done with at noon on january 13... i want acknowledgement that the question at hand is one of "what *should* i be doing with my life?, and what if i'm not really qualified for something i've put a heck of a lot of time into preparing for?"

in the end, either, yes i'll pass and in two weeks be looking ahead to my next set of grad school hurdles... or i'll fail, have one more semester of being paid to take classes, and then be off looking for a new job... in time, yes, this will pass, and i know that.

but standing at a junction of two different roads, one of which is a huge scary question mark, and having little control over what happens, having put in all i can into studying, and still feeling like i'm coming up short, i just want validation that it's ok to be afraid.

the end.