Haas waiver exam results are in...

Well, I’ve been notified that I’ve passed both the statistics and math waiver exams. I have no idea how I passed the stats exam, but I’m not going to complain. I’ve already started online courses that would have also qualified as prerequisites and passing these tests takes the pressure off of the final grade for those classes. But I think in light of my low confidence in my current math acumen, actually completely the classes will be very valuable.

In truth, this whole math testing process has been a real blow to my ego. One of my college majors was in math for crying out loud. But if you don’t use the math, you lose it. And that is what happened. I was surprised at how much of my professional identity was based on the fact that I had once tested in the 98th percentile for mathematics skills (high school standards tests), achieved perfect scores on my math Regents exams (NY state high school equivalency tests for a special Regents diploma), graduated with a double major (computer science and math), and thought differential equations was fun. I had assumed that writing software for over 18 years would keep my “math” mind sharp. Nope.

My day to day activities don’t require very much number crunching and even when I need to do that, I have software that does the calculations for me. My verbal test scores had never been high early in my career and I had so little confidence in my writing skills back then that I avoided writing as if it was the plague. Yet, somehow, 19 years after college I took the GMAT and scored in the 96% for verbal. Scary. I had to take my SATs twice so that I could qualify for a scholarship that I needed. The funny thing is I was actually drunk for my first test. Not very responsible I know, but I was 18 and one of my closest friends was going into the Marines and we had a going away party the night before. My verbal scores were pretty high for that test and my math low, when I retook the exam sober my verbal was low and my math was high. Go figure.

I’ve read articles that talked about how we don’t really know ourselves and that we are not usually good at the things we think we’re good at. My recent testing spree has indicated that to be the case for me. And I don’t like it one bit!