Biggest Test of My Academic Life...

The next five years of my life are riding on tomorrow.




I've spent the past four years falling in love with mathematics. Classes, research, independent studies, TAing, learning on my own, traveling half way around the world to study it for four and a half months, reading books about the history of math (and if you know me, you know that I don't just read). It's been a beautiful journey, filled with me growing up and finding something that I truly love doing.

I'm not ready for this journey to end.

For three hours tomorrow, I will be taking a test whose sole purpose is to see how much math I can remember from the past four years. It's going to be brutal. It's going to be long. It's going to be the hardest test I've ever taken in my whole entire life.

The Math Subject GRE is a necessary evil that every math grad school prospective student must undergo. It's going to rock me. It's going to be 66 questions that will make me second guess even being interested in math at all. It's going to be three hours of confidence killing, incredibly difficult math.

But I'm not scared. I'm not worried about it.
(OK, I'm horrified, but I'm trying really hard not to be).

I've overcome so much in the past four years, and I'm not going to let one silly test stand in the way of my dream of going to grad school to get my PhD; my dream to continue my love affair with mathematics. I owe it to myself to fight for this dream with everything I have.

So I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and take this darned test. And then I'm going to forget about it. I'm going to drive home where I will finally meet my newest nephew, and give my oldest nephew the world's. biggest. hug. ever.

I'm going to spend the weekend with my family and keep reminding myself why I do this:

Because I love it.

The GRE's can suck it.