Thoughts on Testing

Studying math for the past several hours has drained all the creativity out of my brain, so I couldn't even come up with a catchy title for this blog.

I do not like math.

I'm sorry to all my math teachers and all you other math lovers and especially my dear aunt and uncle who are both math professors. My distaste for the subject is probably because I never took one of your classes.

I'm studying math because I'm taking the GRE on Friday. I'm taking the GRE because I'm applying for grad school - again. This time to get a PhD in English Lit. Not math. Obviously. But, for some reason, they think it's important to test your understanding of mathematical concepts and relationships between x and y and stuff.

The biggest reason why I don't like math is because I don't know enough about it. And I don't know enough about it because I 1) didn't learn it 2) don't remember it. I was a Drama major in college. The only math class I had to take was Math in Society, in which we learned about credit cards and interest rates. The class was such a joke that for one of my group's presentations, we did a puppet show I wrote with paper bags about the cultural role of the digits 0-5. For example, the number 3 talked about how he was invited to every wedding. It made sense at the time. We got an A.

Anyway, the reason I don't remember math is because I'm not continually learning it and I'm not being tested on it. This got me thinking about other kinds of tests in life. What we learn (or re-learn, or don't learn) from these tests must be the really important stuff. The stuff that God values so much that He wants to make sure we know it, understand it, live it. He doesn't test us because He's mean or likes to see us squirm. He wants us to succeed in this life He's given us, He wants us to know His love and His enoughness. (yeah, I made up that word, but I'm gonna get a PhD in English, so I can do that) The best thing about God's tests is that there is no scoring (that's grace!).

I hate that my acceptance to a school might be contingent on how well I do on this test, but I have to trust (I learned that through a test) that it will all work out.