Maffmatiks Und Papierwerk

As I wade through the paperwork involved in going back to college, my thoughts flicker toward the deaths all those trees that are making this possible. Though I don't spend much time musing on their sacrifice because I am already on to the next step in the process, and the next, and the next. It does not end.

The smell of burnt electrical components follows me around wherever I go this week. I'm pretty sure I fried something when I took a math placement test on Monday. Equations and slope-intercept formulas have haunted my sleep since high school algebra all those years ago. It's true, I have avoided math like the plague for the greatest part of a decade. I scoffed at it all through my undergraduate career, and chortled with a superior air once I had made it to graduate school without even touching the stuff.

And now here, I found myself taking a math placement test to determine my worth. Principles locked away for eons in the dungeons of my cerebrum were dredged up; postulates exiled in darkness were granted a reprieve. A parade of logical horrors marched out of my mind and onto the paper, their tattering banners announcing the honest-to-God truth: math stays with you forever.

I stumbled out of the testing center in a mental fog, the smell of burnt wiring pouring from my ears. In the End of Days, Math will ride out on a white calculator and claim us all...