Exam Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the beginning of the end, the one coming after a hundred other beginnings and before a hundred more ends.

Exams.

Tomorrow I have Algebra, which sounds innocuously easy, though it's the (theoretically) hardest class I've taken. Some of it is easy, when it touches on concepts that Scott knows (integer factorization), but then it shoots off into the stratosphere and then you have factorization in a PID (Principal Ideal Domain), which can always be formed from an integer domain with the Euclidean algorithm, or a field, though we can have a PID in an integral domain without a Euclidean algorithm, like in Z[(1+sqrt(19))/2], though we learned that fact without proof. It's things like that, things I learn that would take long to explain... they don't make me feel smarter necessarily, just disconnected. I hold worth in it, of course, as a mental exercise, an intriguing object of the mind... but it's not like anyone else has to. I suspect many people wouldn't be any happier or sadder knowing that fact. Well, they might if Scott (brother) said it, he can still do things like that passably well.

So here's how I plan to spend tomorrow morning.

Wake up whenever I wake up, between 8 and 9. Shower, get dressed moderately well, buy a newspaper, go to breakfast. There I'll have sausage, a biscuit, and cereal like normal, with cranberry juice. I'll do the Sudoku, and the Jumble, but I'll skip the crossword, at least until after the exam. Then I'll spend time reading... anything. Online news stories, poems, anything to keep me occupied. Finally I'll go to class, take one last scan over my notes, and go into zen mode. Just empty the mind. I'll probably be talking to other people, but there'll be that knot tumbling around in my tummy, ready to blossom into a butterfly (if I'm prepared) or mush into a grub (if I'm not... thank goodness, these don't happen often). By the time I walk out, it'll be lunch time. Then I eat and spend the afternoon studying. If I did terrific or horrible, I'll celebrate or console with an Italian soda at the Golden Roast. Otherwise, I'll probably sit outside somewhere.

Why so much focus on an exam? Because I grok exams. I love them, in a geeky, nerdy, strange way. They are a playground. No matter how complex the question is, the task is simple - complete it. Instantly. No meandering for a few weeks on a paper (though meandering is good sometimes), just a semester of learning and days of active studying focused in this one, two-hour final exertion. Cathartic. The competitor in me loves winning the A, the academic in me loves knowing enough to earn the A, the rest of me pats the other two parts on the head, going along with it because, well, there's no pleasing those two sides otherwise.

And then summer! I get to go home! Time to get things done! Family to see! Time to relax! And some more time spent on the road, mainly because even if (a big, highly doubted if) I miss Leslie no less than last summer, I will be more able to drive, barring anything as horrible as mono.