Context
The following filled up an otherwise empty final comprehensive examination booklet, given at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU. Three comprehensive examinations are requirements of the Master's Degree Program in Mathematics. This was the first.
The Booklet
I have no idea and I don't care. [side margin, outlined]
x^4+x^3y^1+x^2y^2+xy^3+y^4
I'm sure this is all very easy. I'm sure this only takes a moment. Am I lazy? Or did I just choose the wrong path? I am guilty, though -- of inaction. And then, so what? Has this made my life any more worthy? No. But somewhere somehow someone beat this idea into my head, long before I could muster the volition to think it nonsense, that my life is judged by some sort of high standard. The truth is that mathematics is no longer where my interest lies -- at first it came as doubt that was quickly cast off by imagining that the great mathematical strengths would eventually come... tomorrow... mañana. But of course, Z----- was right: whichever way you are at twenty, this is the way you will be forever. In my case, when I was at twenty, I was in a cursed relationship, with a cursed woman to whom I surrendered my soul, and who ate it up completely with a side of mustard and didn't leave a tip. Just as the saying goes that if you swim in the R----- River in C-----, you shall never leave that town; in the same way, you never escape who you are. Thus --
Get me out of this accursed room, full of cast-iron, white-shirted, city pricks whom [sic] I never gave a chance for the fear of seeming inferior. Make these country club pool boys melt away as if a splash of cold ocean water has primed the surface of their watercolor intellect. They are intellectual giants, and I am the lowliest cockroach against the backdrop that they form.
Perhaps I shall write this until the remainder of this exam, letting the minutes seep until the last moment: precious seconds of life, given to vanity, given away to the doctrine of cowardice. I do not have the guts to hand in my empty exam booklet and walk away. I will be thought of as the maddest genius in the room! And then they will look at my responses, and there will be a fire in the back of my skull, inscribed there in flames by their judgements.
What explanation do I owe my loving and supportive family? In principle, I owe them nothing by way of money. They did not pay for this. I paid the $100,000 for two and a half years of better understanding who I am. I will still get a good job; but I feel I have ruined certain expectations. Not even ones of success -- rather, ones of integrity. I should have been an anti-Sparticus, to step forth and admit my defeat, instead of manifesting and stewing the resentment of this perfectly upstanding institution for many years. But I did. That is who I am, and all apologies.
Philosophy ruins lives. Once you start thinking about meanings and purposes, it quickly becomes clear that the meaningful is perfectly meaningless, the purposeful is perfectly useless. Instead of understanding, one can achieve only confusion and unanswered questions. Instead, it is much easier to sleep, or to be drunk. One doesn't step over the threshhold [sic] of dreams, or the enebriated [sic] state, or death: one finds himself there. What is more important? Love, money, or religion? Success, struggle, art? It is pointless to try to discern, and the wretched human mammal must close his eyes and march forth, forward, staccato. It too shall pass. Just as the proctor of this exam said.
Shall I continue sitting here? (1 hour left.) Shall I march downstairs to the office of Of [sic] the Main Secretary Of the Main Department Of The Best University Of Our Glorious Universe and shall I declare myself? "I'm decided," I will say, "that I shan't ever pass your exams, and nor do I want to!" And T----- will look at me sideways and think I'm crazy, or inferior, or both, and she'll question me about how many hours I spent preparing, and I'll say none, and then she'll recommend that I speak with this or that professor, a really swell guy, caring and sensitive, and trained as a psychologist (despite being a mathematician), and this man K-----, V-----, or Satan shall restore my faith in mathematics. Nonsense! Close my file, lady, drop the book on me, and strike me from your all knowing [sic] database with your fat little industrious fingers. I'll run down the hallway, get into a red London phonebooth [sic] that will appear in the hallways of Courant (magically) and pick up the receiver which shall be bigger even than my swollen hand, and I'll yell, "Dad! Hello! How are you? I'm quitting grad school! Because it is not what I desire; and sure, I should have done it earlier, and now my grandmas and grandpas will be all worked up, but I shall never have to explain any decisions of my life. It will always just be one of those unmentionable pink elephants sitting in the drawing room -- a cause of contention, but only the eyes will give away everyone's disappointment!"
Then I shall put on my suit jacket, walk out of the building, and be free!
Look at the hordes of people who went to work after college. A----- did it. P----- did it. O----- did it. D----- did it. Are any of them truly miserable? Am I more or less intelligent than them? Look at the math Ph.D.'s. T----- did it. Most of the old Rutgers crew. Shall I sit in an office for the rest of my life with a black pen and crinkled sheets of computer paper working out the eigenvalues of some arbitrary matrix? Shall I lose myself in a world of LaTeXed abstraction? Shall I take low wages for something cannot conceivably cause happiness? Does one require recognition to live, as our brains pathetically erode?
Minutes and minutes to go. A good judge of character, such as myself, always has the notion of how things will work out in actuality. In eventuality. This exam will end and another will begin. There will be no T-----, no phone calls. This is your punishment, and you shall take it like a Spartacus, like a Joan of Arc, like the victim of the Taliban. You have chosen a way for yourself, and in order to grasp your decision, you must leave your current way. You have set up a gallows at the end of the concourse, and only through the noose lies freedom; the weight shall be relieved from your shoulders, and revealed to be dust. Cosmic dust.
As punishment for your caprice, for your indecision, your laziness and procrastination, you shall be thus sentenced:
You shall go to three exams, each very early in the morning and lasting exactly three hours. Beforehand, you will be allowed to study for twenty four hours. But it shall be that you will only understand the first half of any sentence you read. No matter whether you study or not, you shall sit at your exam and know that you will fail. You shall not complete a single question. Those answers that you do write shall be marked wrong. Everyone around you in the examination room will be in good spirits, and they, the intellectual giants, will all get good grades; no one shall leave before three hours are done. While sitting and working, you will not be allowed to leave, nor do anything that looks askance. Your peers will watch you, periodically checking that nothing out of the ordinary is being perpetrated. The proctor shall walk up and down the isles like a guard tiger. You will feel only shame. When the exams are done, you will have two hours respite from your own personal hell, and then it shall begin anew.
30 minutes. The first third of my jail sentence is almost completed. It feels false, empty. Like handing a child a toy made out of ashes, that falls apart to the touch. A long meditation. Do I have the guts for two more? This too shall pass.
15 minutes.
I'm following our proctor the tiger.
What are the eigenvalues of operator delta-2? If I can, I shall tell you. But I will not feel happy to do it.
One last go at this enigma of an exam.