"Perfect Day"

It was near the end of my take-home exam. As usual, I only started work on it the 3rd day. But the proofs were more or less sketched out. Yet I, the inveterate procrastinator waited until I had to stay up all night on the 6th night, before I started writing everything down.

On the 6th night, I got home to find codfish online. We had a cyber relationship for a few months, but it was breaking down. For a while, she thought nothing of feeding my insecurities until one day, on Valentine’s day, I tore into her with every insult that I could think of. We made up after that, but things were never really the same.

Things came to a head that night. I can’t remember the exact details, but that night was the night that I knew, in no uncertain terms, that it was over. It was the first time I was heartbroken, and as some of you might know, the first time is the worst.

There was still the take-home exam to do. I was writing it up while curled up in my favourite bathtub. Soon it was dawn. I only slept for 2 hours, and the first class, where I had to hand up my take-home exam, I passed by in a zombie state.

For the second class, I had to make a presentation that covered the whole period. It started OK, then when I was halfway through the proof, I made a mistake, and the professor leapt upon it immediately. I got annoyed with him and answered back. My mind was blank, and he challenged me with a vindictiveness that I found quite unnerving in that mental state – heartbroken and sleep deprived. In the end, I discovered my own mistake, and recovered to finish the rest of my presentation. Some in the class were probably repulsed by the angry, bitter expression etched on my face. For most of them, however, it was just one more higher mathematics class, when you have long since lost the thread of the original argument. They stared ahead in blank boredom.

After the lesson was over, an acquaintance, to whom I hardly spoke to, but who had been my classmate for various courses, came to me, and said, “He’s a PhD. He’s qualified to take your argument apart like that.” I smiled weakly at him. If only he knew the rest of the story!

If people were to ask me, “what is the worst day of your uni days?” I would definitely tell them about that day. But you have to see it in a larger context. The breakup with codfish was inevitable. I even knew it was going to happen from day 1. We stayed friends for a few years after that. For the 2 maths courses, I got an A and an A-. In the larger picture, nothing I did on that day was truly damaging. Except maybe it was very bad for morale.

So why am I telling you this? Because I just went through a minor version of what happened on that day. There were some things I didn't know until the night, and that was when I figured out why ppl were suddenly so nice to me.