"There's nothing in your life you can't learn from, if you respond with the right attitude."
-- Rick Warren

toast.  Sleep hadn’t helped.  I dragged myself over to school for the last final

exam… and, really, I was too tired to care how I did!  That was a first for me. 

I’d always been really competitive with myself about my math grades.  (cough-

geek!)  That final was with my favorite teacher too, so I typically would have

wanted to do really well for him.  But, that day, I was too tired to care… and it

was the very first math test I’d taken where   I wasn’t the least bit nervous!  It

was great.  I just sat calmly and easily worked the problems.  There was even

a problem that wasn’t like anything I’d seen before.  This teacher was a

notoriously tricky guy!  I had to figure out how to work a process backwards…

But, I got it!  In fact, I got a perfect paper!  My only perfect math final exam and

I wasn’t even nervous.

          After that, tests weren’t as bad for me…  I realized that I didn’t have to get

myself all worked up over them.

          But, then came my thesis defense!  For my master’s degree in math, I had

to write a thesis.  This was, basically, a 117 page book that contained a 63

page proof.  (cough-super-geek!)  The other 54 pages contained my

explanations of the math used in the proof.  It took me about eight months to

write, and it had to be reviewed and accepted or I wasn’t going to get my

degree.  So, this was a BIG deal. 

Continued on the next page