The Urbane Homestead

More good news

I  was able to actually answer all 40 questions on my statistics final—and even the guesses were educated ones! And as of now, the probability that I will ever remember a single statistics calculation is: zero.

Proof of the malicious intent of the cosmos

I can only conclude that the following activities are cruel and elaborate practical jokes, that prove the existence of an impish evil that lives only to make us doubt our sense of competence:

1. Statistics. "And then, take the square root of the hypotenuse of your left elbow, divide it by the number of  original colonies, find the result on the table on page 1,378 ('But the book only has 1,249 pages!'), and add it to the results of your advertising revenue calculations from last week. Voila!"

2. Yoga. "Now twist to the right side, slide your left hip bone forward and your calf muscle up, and straighten your right arm above your head, while you grasp your big toe and pull. Meanwhile, make the top of your head as flat as you can, drop your eyeballs to the back of your head, and remember to relax."

And there are more. Why do I subject myself to this? If it builds character, I will surely have the Charles Atlas, the Rolls Royce, the Grand Canyon of characters by the end of April.

I wish it really had been a dream

I'm enrolled in the U-M part-time MBA program, for some reason. I'm about halfway through; only a couple more years to go. I'm actually really enjoying the program. At home or at work, everything I do matters to someone else; when I'm sitting in class, the only person I'm responsible for is me. I can be whatever I want—even mediocre. I've learned to accept the peculiarity of finding an MBA program a great way to relax. And, also, this is such a different way of looking at the world from anything I've studied before: learning how accounting works is downright exotic.

My background in quantitative studies is weak and thin, in addition to being far in the past. I didn't expect to do very well in my Statistics class. Imagine my surprise when I got back a homework exercise with a big red 100 on the top (it's on the refrigerator now, of course), followed by a 95, and a 98! I must be a secret Statistics genius, so secret even I didn't know!

The other shoe dropped last night at the midterm exam. It went like a dream—one of those nightmares where you're taking a test in a class you never went to and didn't even know you were enrolled in, plus you're in your underwear. I opened the test booklet and three hours of story problems swam before my eyes. I took a deep breath and started going through it in a methodical way (in fact, I tried a few different methods), but the questions never turned into English. I was consoled by the observation that no one else seemed to be any happier than I was, and also by realizing that, even if I'm not learning Statistics, I'm learning a very important virtue: humility.