One engages in mathematics to escape reality as much as to explain reality. 

The personal, social, and political realities of obsessive human nature — so invested in seeking perfection yet utterly imperfect — are repulsive acceptance of conformity. On the other hand, the nuances of mathematics — unnatural scribbles, fabricated definitions, fictional symbols, so richly endowed with innate imperfections to the masses — are the problematization of reality itself, for what exists here rarely exists elsewhere. Hence, the speaker of this language is granted a seductive perfection. For in this pursuit, one escapes the real (phenomena) and embraces the Real, i.e., one inherent within, one granted by the possibilities of one's own consciousness.

As such, where mathematics directly applies is not to medicine, law, or business (although it progressively does so) but to the actualization of one's potential to confront the very definition of existence and meaning.

The same can be said of pure forms of art and philosophy.

"It's precisely his fantastic dreams, his gross stupidity, that he wants to cling to, solely to convince himself (as if this were absolutely essential) that people are still people and not piano keys upon which the laws of nature themselves are not only playing with their own hands, but threatening to persist in playing until nothing can be desired that is not tabulated in the directory. And even if, in this manifestation, our life frequently turns out to be rubbish, it is still life and not simply the extraction of a square root. And you can't forgive the laws of nature; nor forget, since even if these are laws of nature it still hurts." (from Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky)

"The meaning of what the artist is going to say does not exist anywhere not in things, which as yet have no meaning, nor in the artist himself, in his unformulated life. It summons one away from the already constituted reason in which 'cultured men' are content to shut themselves, toward a reason which contains its own origins." (from Cezanne's Doubt, Ponty)

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth."

"'Do you know what a poem is, Esther?' 'No, what?' 'A piece of dust.' 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.' And of course, Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep."

"The figures around me weren't people, but shop dummies, painted to resemble people and propped up in attitudes counterfeiting life." (from The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath)

"Them jive ass critics don’t know any more about my music than the cats who imitate me, see? The trick in making great music is great sound. It’s got to sound just so, like two dogs in heat rubbing up against each other, dig? You have to keep it loose. Make it ragged, I tell ’em. Don’t squeeze it." (Miles Davis)

"Superior jazz carries with it a mystery, not because we cannot predict its arrival, not because we find ourselves resigned to inarticulate babbling when we try to describe its redemptive energy. It is a mystery because every appearance of permanent lyrical uniqueness in the long jazz heritage seems to deliver, just as Yeats or Blake or Rilke each delivers, an inner song beneath (yet wholly within) the discourse of its spoken beauty."

"...a growing sense that every act of human expression is open to technological revision. We live in an era of cultural secondariness. In the world of images and texts (including musical texts), receiving and altering now supersede creating and inventing. The twenty-first century begins with the weight of ideas giving way to the speed of their constantly enhanced transfer. The era of secondary things is, thus, defined by ransacking images and once vibrant ideas. Like Wallace Stevens’s snow man, such vibrance, nothing itself, confronts the nothing that is." (Jim Merod)

"When one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things do sometimes command attention, but they are often little more than trivia."

"I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing - their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights - then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought." 

"Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me."

"What's lost never perishes."

How does it feel, how does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone. (Bob Dylan)

"The marvel of consciousness—that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non-being." (Nabokov)

"I'm opposed to opposing the opposite of anonymous."

"There is no omniscient and omnipotent wonder algorithm: There are as many intelligences as there are goals and worlds." (Pinker)

"He has plenty of time, for the years have left no mark on him and to all intents and purposes he is still a young man. He is without ambition and he has no desire for fame; to become anything of a public figure would be deeply distasteful to him; and so it may be that he is satisfied to lead his chosen life and be no more than just himself. He is too modest to set himself up as an example to others; but it may be he thinks that a few uncertain souls, drawn to him like moths to a candle, will be brought in time to share his own glowing belief that ultimate satisfaction can only be found in the life of the spirit, and that by himself following with selflessness and renunciation the path of perfection he will serve as well as if he wrote books or addressed multitudes. But this is conjecture. I am of the earth, earthy; I can only admire the radiance of such a rare creature, I cannot step into his shoes and enter into his innermost heart as I sometimes think I can do with persons more nearly allied to the common run of men." (from The Razor's Edge)

"Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams."

"Not that alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine."

"All efforts of reason and analysis are like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles."

"Kindness is manners. It is a superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant."

"For only through assiduous repetition is it possible to redistribute skewed tendencies."

"More often than not, I have observed that convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things."

"The mind is nothing you use. The mind is simply there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements." (Murakami)

"Translators have a peculiar daring, in that they undertake to do to the best of their ability something they know cannot be done at all, that is, to ultimate reality. For identity can never be re-created; the poet speaks but once, and even the closest echo is already hollow with loss. Yet translation makes possible an approach to other cultures, other imaginings than our own, and the temptation to translate may become irresistible."

"To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me." (Monet)

"Jupiter, you are angry, therefore you are wrong."

"Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering." (Dostoyevsky)

 "...often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it." 

"There is shadow under this red rock, 

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either 

Your shadow at morning striding behind you 

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; 

I will show you fear in a handful of dust." (from The Waste Land)

"If you were up there, Sté, all you'd see is parrots going cocorico, cocorico. You couldn't understand a word they're saying and they didn't even understand each other.... You too, Lenù, look out or you'll be the parrot's parrot.... You and Sarratore's son [Nino], the same. The world brigade for peace; we have the technical capability; hunger, war. But do you really work that hard in school so you can say things just like he does? Whoever finds a solution to the problems is working for peace. Bravo.... You, too, you want to be a puppet from the neighborhood who performs so you can be welcomed into the home of those people? You want to leave us alone in our own shit, cracking our skulls, while all of you go cocorico cocorico, hunger, war, working class, peace?"

"What does a word mean? And a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person, is boundless, ineffable." 

"I consider a book alive only during the writing. Afterward, it dies." (from In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri)

Many thoughts exist against examinations, including most of mine. This little blurb is in support of them.

We're in the space of academia. There are universal properties in this space like many other contemporary spaces: it is competitive, fast-paced, and aims for efficient production. We produce a somewhat humble product, aptly named knowledge. But we're industrial too. We can be idealists and contemplate of better academic and intellectual atmosphere, and everyone is invited to do so, but beautiful thoughts mostly remain as thoughts.

Examinations have always been part of our space. Most are well aware that a set of 6 questions answered 66% correctly in 60 minutes says nothing much about intellectual preparedness or the ability to succeed in life. However, it surprisingly accomplishes many things. Very conveniently, examinations are an effective simulation of the usual academic culture. They give an idea of how a seemingly elementary challenge can induce existential queries, how stressful not understanding something can be, and how horrifyingly universal the Imposter Syndrome is. The experiences one has during examinations are recurring experiences in academic spaces: There will be many more exams, perhaps in various forms. One will be tested even after working for 6 years as a professor and be mercilessly kicked out. 

The exams are preferential. They're easier for a group of students and not for others. But this will again be a recurring experience in academia. There will always be a group of researchers extremely well poised for the problem and the topic, whichever research group one belongs to. Eventually, one learns to benefit from these people instead of being overwhelmed by their presence.

Harsh as it sounds, an inability to deal with the emotional aspects of the examinations means one is going to face similar experiences in the future, which are omnipresent in academia. And one is likely to be more successful in a different industry. As such, a skillset in this industry it seems is emotional stoicism. Examinations may be the first experience of a 'failure.' But this is the key: we must all learn to redefine our notions of winning and losing. 

A part of navigating life, given the contemporary sociopolitical structure, is to figure out which space suits the being that one is. And we all are trying to figure this out throughout our lives. Examinations surprisingly assist us do so. 

A lyrical fraction rendered

listless, like gravity

suspended, the spirit’s weight

exempt from drag.

A mystery — of permanent 

inner song beneath, yet wholly within,

the discourse of its spoken beauty.

One speculates at the feeling. How rare

and fleeting it appears

to be. One imagines it is life

itself, the ability to think

and feel, just that alone,

that they adore as the dark room flickers,

the music unfolds, and the blessed

analog tape churns.

Words rearranged from the essay The Question of Miles Davis, Jim Merod

boundary 2, Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2001, pp. 1-103 (Article) Published by Duke University Press