Week of hell

So this past week for me has been a roller coaster. I began the week with being unbelievably stressed because I has spent the previous Friday and Saturday in Szeged (the third longest city in Hungary) at a lecture and visiting the city, and then I spent Saturday night at the Sausage and Palinka festival at Buda castle. It was an amazing two days, but because I was so busy, I had little time to rest nor to work on the multiple homework assignments I had nor to study for my two exams. Because of this, I ended up feeling very behind and stressed on Sunday and Monday. I also had been having a very hard time adjusting to the amazing levels of intelligence of the group of students at this program. So many of them are in far more classes than me and many seem to enjoy constantly thinking of math. They remind me of how I used to be.

When I was in high school, I adored math. It was probably my favorite thing in the world, with Mexican culture being its only competitor. I was in math team and absolutely loved it. Practice was always the highlight of my day. But ever since coming to college and taking multivariate calculus (which I hated), my love for math has continued to decline. I have found myself thinking in a much more qualitative manner, and ideas that previously would have been simple for me to grasp have become extremely difficult. I have had to fight for every grade, and the main reason I have continued math, and why I decided to attend this program, was the hope that maybe I would reacquire my love for math. In many ways, I have. I love the challenge that is math. I love the different way of thinking that I know many people cannot grasp. I love the fun little tricks to solving extremely complex problems. I love all of that... but I have found that upper level math is nothing like calculus and the “math” that most people think of. Proof writing, such abstract ideas, and complex theorems that as common in higher level math have never caused as much excitement in me as concrete math with actual numbers. Even considering this, I have really enjoyed my time here studying set theory, graph theory, probability, and MPS. Even with the extremely frustrating problems and long nights, I have begun to love math again. This week, however, has made me question that love again.

Because I was so far behind at the beginning of this week, the rest of the week as been a crazy race to catch up. Tuesday I was up late working on graph theory (for Thursday) and set theory (for Wednesday). Because of this, I had little time to study for my MPS test (Wednesday) that I had assumed would be a breeze. You know the saying that assuming with make and ass out of you and me? Well, I don't know about you, but it made a huge ass out of me. I did much worse on the MPS exam that I had expected. Come test time, many of the processes that I had learned flew out of my mind, and I resorted to very long and drawn out attempts to answer any question I could. I am very lucky that point received on homework goes towards the exams as “extra credit”, because without that I would probably have failed this exam. Even with it, I will be lucky to get a B. Wednesday, after class, I was again up late working on my graph theory homework. That left me only Thursday to finish my probability problem set and to study for my probability exam. I was up late, but come time for the exam, my problem set was complete and I was feeling confident. I had memorized all of the theorems, done all of the sample problem tests from the book, reread my notes, and looked over my previous homework. I thought that nothing would surprise me. Again, I was wrong. The test was based on two problems. One was very similar to many problems we have done before, and I did fairly well on that one, but the other was a very complex expansion on a type of problem that we had only done once before and in a much simpler form. This problem asked for the number of ways that one could get from the origin (0,0,0) to the point (10,11,12) while one is only allowed to move in a positive direction (right, forward, or up). The other problem we had done was “how many ways can you get from (0,0) to (4,3) if you can only move right or up?”. In this problem, I had simply written out all of the possibilities and counted them up. It was a simple grid so I could do that. In the problem on the test however, there was no way for me to do that. There were just too many possibilities- somewhere in the ten thousands. The problem had 5 parts and all of them required the answer from the first which I could not figure out for the life of me. A combination of frustration and a lack of work space made me panic, and I have no confidence in my test results. The only comfort I have is that many other people seemed to be struggling as well, so if I'm lucky, maybe the professor with curve the test. I can only wait and see.

A combination of the frustration with my work, my test results, the realization that I really am no longer the math nerd that I used to be (and was proud of), an extreme missing of my friends and family from back home, and multiple fights with multiple people have made this week a living hell. I have no clue how I did on either of my exams, and I can only hope that I passed both. If I didn't, then I may need to drop or audit a class which will horribly affect my ability to graduate early. At this point though, everything is behind me and there is nothing that I can do about it. I am realizing (with the help of my amazing boyfriend Dante) that not graduating early really won't be the end of the world and that I put far too much pressure on myself (and others) with regards to school. At this point, I can only accept that this has been a very hard week, but that I have made it through it. Hopefully, the ones ahead will be easier. If not, then I'm sure that since I made it through this one that I can make it through the others. Or I can hope...

I'm sorry for such a depressing post this week, but this is suppose to give you a taste of my life abroad, and I feel that not sharing the negatives with you would be an insult to those of you who honestly want to know how I'm doing. At this point, I'm not doing too well. I am however, still very much enjoying my classes and my time abroad. I have learned about myself by being here, and I only expect to learn more. I will be okay, and I am not in any way giving up. I will not drop any of my classes until the very end and I will fight to pass all of them.