I’ve put about two hundred hours into studying over the last forty five days. I’ve been a bit of a hermit and I thank my friends for being understanding. On the math side, I can do certain calculations and leave out steps with the answer still being correct. This would be neater if not for the fact that I sometimes look at my notes and am unsure what steps I left out. I see regions of integration without knowing quite what my logic is but my answers seem to be correct. Yesterday I solved a multiple choice problem by repeatedly mis-solving the question and eliminating those answers leaving the right one. These are the milestones of competency that I should have been looking at before I threw myself into failure the previous two times I took the exam.
Today was my last day of solid studying before my exam and I did 110 sample problems, the equivalent of four exams worth. I consumed 85 pieces of scrap paper and ate only about 1200 calories in food. Fear as a weight loss plan.
My two priorities are getting a better job and improving my health. Â As they are priorities, I’m actively working on them and they win when they get in fights with other tasks. Â I go into work late and stay late if I have a late night running and social events lose to work functions that may allow me to advance myself. Â Part of the “better job” priority has been catching up on actuarial math and preparing to re-take exam P/1. Â My calculus muscles were very out of shape when I started and I cursed myself for not remember if it was the integral or derivative of f'(x)/f(x) which equaled the ln(f(x)) but after a bit the work grew on me. Â I was again dealing with things where I was unambiguously wrong. Â Data at work can be misinterpreted, interactions with people are indecisive but with sample test questions I had the opportunity to do something I had missed, being simply and irrefutably wrong. Â In that I find freedom.
I spent another morning staring blankly at equations and methods that make the more arcane aspects of alchemy seem pedestrian and decided to call it a day after I successfully got an answer to a sample problem.  Mind y0u, it wasn’t the right answer, but I was very proud that my wrong answer was one of the wrong answers listed in the text.  After moments like these I sometimes second guess a math-inclined career so I struck up an AIM conversation with someone else who was in my position a few years ago that I hadn’t talked to lately.
Me: Did you ever have those times where you ran into a roadblock and got mad?
Him: Yes, but you learn to work through them. Â You have moments of inspiration where suddenly you realize you’re an idiot.
Me: So how did you deal with constantly running into those puzzleboxes?
Him: After I took the 3rd exam the 3rd time and failed I decided to go to law school.
Me: Really?
Him: Best decision I’ve ever made.
I failed Exam MLC the first time. I’m ok with that as the pass rate is about 30% as first time passers seem to be Act. Sci. TAs whose tenure depends on such things. I have a job and have once again overcommitteed myself in Scouting and sometimes hope that glutton is added to the three Gs of gay, gal and godless which provide reasons for eviction so I can take care of some things, putting multiple choice tests behind me being one of them. Seeing my time dwindle preparing for the Klondike Derby I reached a state of calm regarding my impending failure, much like the driver who removes his hands from the wheel upon realizing his car has broached the edge of cliff or the accountant that straightens his die when he realizes he’s outmatched in a Tiajuana Standoff. I’m being periodically hit by bolts of inspiration whereas suddenly the undefined expected value of the Cauchy distribution makes sense or I predict the success rate of children crossing a busy street by constructing an impromptu Markov Chain, although I assume once the first child was hit by a cement truck the distribution ceased to be stationary. I’ve slept well, and see reality pass me like the river to a rock, knowing it will eventually be worn down to sand. I’m not getting angry about people who ride the right lane approaching a constriction and merely chucked with the fellow from housekeeping threw out my unfinished lunch having stepped away to get more pepper. And then, I found the piece that brought it all together:
Via Somethingawful.com, by CosmoDNA
No matter what happens, I’m still better off than Paul Granger, pseudo-writer of children’s fiction. Although it would be a spot funny if an actuary wrote Choose Your Own Adventures. Especially if it started with a personality profile upon which the approximate path take could be guessed and the path would be strewn with “I knew you were going to go this way” and “really, this way? I must have given you too much credit”. That’s the kind of loathing can be reduced and used as pancake syrup it’s so thick and rich.
Well, let’s shrug that whole thing off with what I think is the most amazing video on the Supreme Court ever:
