Okay, so...
I might have been noticeably more agitated and stressed over the last few weeks, and I might have been posting when I should have been trying to sleep, and I might have put off a few FAQs that I said I'd do and intended to finish more quickly, but the time for that is done.
Now for the backstory...
Even before elementary school I had far too much interest in mathematics and logic, and by the time I entered school I was way too far ahead for my own good. Most teachers learned something from me that they'd never have expected to find, and I spent most of my time neglecting school work because the stuff I could do on my own didn't insult my intelligence.
("Jeffrey, how did you figure this out?"
"Umm, I looked at it..."
"What on this planet made you want to find a test for divisibility by eleven?"
"I don't like eleven."
"So?"
"I wanted to spend less time with it. Now it's easy to divide it and get remainders."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"You're distracting the other students. We're trying to do subtraction."
"You're distracting me. I'm trying to learn."
"Jeff... haven't we talked about you showing your work?"
"I will when there's something worth showing."
"How do we know you're not cheating if you get the answers so quickly without working them out?"
"How do I know you know this when all you have to do is read out of a book and check answers against a section of the back?"
"Don't insult my intelligence, Jeffrey."
"Try being a fourth-grader sometime."
"What do you mean we're wasting your time?"
"Everything we're doing is just the quadratic formula!"
"What?"
"We spent two months factoring things by guessing, and then we had this magical mystical axis of symmetry, and now you're trying to tell me why we only need to find one irrational root, and it's all just the quadratic formula! Why not just give us that?"
"Where did you find it?"
"A book."
"How do you know it works?"
"*Derives quadratic formula from next year's subject matter.*"
"...")
Fast-forward a bit (the rest is really just like that, sadly) and I'm getting out of high school with basically all the math I'd need to be a mechanical or electrical engineer from dual credit, with that school's dean of math having apologized to me for not being able to keep me entertained and give me enough independent studies to take the senior-level analysis class I wanted to take. I wind up at the University of Texas at San Antonio because I'm told by a good professor there that I could be done with undergraduate bullshit in two years.
Now, UTSA isn't exactly *bad*, but... the school started to serve first-generation minority college students and only recently aspired to be a high-ranking university. Some genius figured out that the U Cal system kicked copious quantities of ass and had several schools that really showed what education should be, and then looked at the UT system with the genius idea of having all of the schools start improving. UT Austin, the main school, is top-notch by any standards; I was accepted there as well, but I really wanted out of the undergraduate stuff so that I could move on to the really interesting material that had to wait for grad school and turned that offer down. So I go to the 'rising star' of the system... and see just how much rising it has to do. There are great teachers and students, but they're very well hidden among dumbasses, worthless floating egos, low standards, and the College of Business, so it took me a good while to find the really challenging and worthwhile material and I was not amused.
I started as a physics major, but the university at some point decided that the physics department had too much potential and started firing people for no good reason at all. We had a couple of people go back to MIT (not go to MIT, or come from MIT... go back to MIT), a guy who worked with Steven Weinberg (incredibly important cosmologist) go back to working with Weinberg, and recently refused tenure to the badass who got his Ph.D. under Weinberg, made the physics department as badass as it is and brought about the Ph.D., brought about a serious amount of tablet-PC usage (tablet salesmen have said repeatedly that they've never seen another school do what UTSA sciences do with them), and did truly impressive research in theoretical physics... for political reasons. By my junior 'year' (my freshman 'year' was my high school courseload and a 17-hour summer, which put me at 35 hours; my sophomore 'year' was a 21-hour semester and a pair of courses finished by CLEP) it was clear that I wouldn't be graduating anytime soon because so few classes were offered.
So I go math, and since (1) more classes are offered and (2) a lot of electives are available (as one is basically expected to minor in something badass; I chose physics, as I already had a lot of it done) I'm on track to graduate very quickly, provided I don't go bonkers and lose it completely. Between 18-21 hour semesters, full summers, and CLEP tests I wind up only needing to take two classes this semester... so I sign up for four.
Because there were few classes offered that I really had interest in, and classes I had to take blocked a few out, this was my easy semester; however, one of my classes was an utter waste of existence, another contained nothing that the prereq and the prereq's prereq hadn't covered better, and a third was far too easy because I just win at abstract algebra, so I had a really boring and disappointing semester for the most part. Abstract Algebra is fun, but a bit slow... so I'm bored. The highlight of the semester was the Special Studies in problem-solving - you know you're in for a good time when an analytic number theorist (analytic number theory is the field that made the guy from A Beautiful Mind go insane, for the record, and is the field featured in the film Pi) from Princeton goes postal on four unsuspecting undergraduates and makes sure they're challenged past their breaking point's breaking point. That one class made up for all the boredom I had gone through at UTSA to get to it, and I'm honestly annoyed that it's over, but I also had one oddball hour of my physics minor (basically because they changed the lower-division physics track from two four-hour courses to three three-hour courses and I was missing an hour because one of my classes, which should have been four-hour, was only three) resting on it so that was nice and pressured too.
Then... finals come. The waste-of-existence class, Mathematical Statistics, didn't have a 'final' so much as a 'last test' and because it was basically plugging shit into formulas I had no idea how I'd do. Problem solving... no final, I just owe the guy a few more problems just for my own standards so that's done. Abstract Algebra I didn't need to take, as I was guaranteed a B, but I wanted a bloody A and a bit more fun with that class so I took it. The completely unoriginal one - Real Analysis II - was the worst mix of boring and pain-in-the-ass-detailed-bullshit imaginable and I didn't know if I had dumbed my answers down enough. Analysis is basically what grew from the seed of the rigorous exploration of calculus - limits, continuity, derivatives and integrals, et cetera - and while I had seen everything before (and a few things I shouldn't have... yes, that's right, I read ahead, you bastards who think I can't possibly understand what it means to be in the uniform closure of a space because you didn't lecture for a week on it, what the fuck are you going do do about it?) I was concerned that I actually seemed like I knew what I was talking about and didn't just take the lectures up the ass and shit them back out on paper like a kindergartener.
So what does that leave? A couple of weeks of not knowing where existence may occur a week in the future... grad school here or working there and moving here or staying where I am and going broke or just tossing it all to the side and screaming about Tube Screamers on the side of the street for donations. Fun, right? Wrongfuckingo. I'm already an insomniac who sees little cartoon badgers flying around and wreaking havoc on exposed bra straps and hairpieces, I don't need more of this shit.
I'm given a good chunk of time where I don't even know if I've earned my degree. I know that if anyone graduating with that degree this year has earned it, it's me... but I don't deal well with bullshit like 'Mathematical Statistics' and 'Eleventh fucking semester of overhyped calculus you've seen in three years, not counting your physics work', so how do I know I've gotten it? I've planned way too much around getting this thing done with in two years, and I already fucked up by not being able to apply to a lot of grad schools - turns out I was a lot less registered for the GRE math than I thought I was - so those are out of the question for a year already, what happens if something goes wrong?
I basically had until two this afternoon to go through every emergency situation in existence to save my ass and prepare for all of them at the same time. Granted, I won't be running out of handcuffs anytime soon, which I suppose is nice, but I wouldn't recommend trying to step your death cults up to another level when funds run dry and you need a new source.
So what happens when I check my grades this afternoon?
Looks like I win. Bachelor's in Math, Physics Minor, three months after turning 20.
So... thanks for reading this, had to get it off my back more than anything else, I should be quite a bit more civil and sensible now.
Jeff
I might have been noticeably more agitated and stressed over the last few weeks, and I might have been posting when I should have been trying to sleep, and I might have put off a few FAQs that I said I'd do and intended to finish more quickly, but the time for that is done.
Now for the backstory...
Even before elementary school I had far too much interest in mathematics and logic, and by the time I entered school I was way too far ahead for my own good. Most teachers learned something from me that they'd never have expected to find, and I spent most of my time neglecting school work because the stuff I could do on my own didn't insult my intelligence.
("Jeffrey, how did you figure this out?"
"Umm, I looked at it..."
"What on this planet made you want to find a test for divisibility by eleven?"
"I don't like eleven."
"So?"
"I wanted to spend less time with it. Now it's easy to divide it and get remainders."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"You're distracting the other students. We're trying to do subtraction."
"You're distracting me. I'm trying to learn."
"Jeff... haven't we talked about you showing your work?"
"I will when there's something worth showing."
"How do we know you're not cheating if you get the answers so quickly without working them out?"
"How do I know you know this when all you have to do is read out of a book and check answers against a section of the back?"
"Don't insult my intelligence, Jeffrey."
"Try being a fourth-grader sometime."
"What do you mean we're wasting your time?"
"Everything we're doing is just the quadratic formula!"
"What?"
"We spent two months factoring things by guessing, and then we had this magical mystical axis of symmetry, and now you're trying to tell me why we only need to find one irrational root, and it's all just the quadratic formula! Why not just give us that?"
"Where did you find it?"
"A book."
"How do you know it works?"
"*Derives quadratic formula from next year's subject matter.*"
"...")
Fast-forward a bit (the rest is really just like that, sadly) and I'm getting out of high school with basically all the math I'd need to be a mechanical or electrical engineer from dual credit, with that school's dean of math having apologized to me for not being able to keep me entertained and give me enough independent studies to take the senior-level analysis class I wanted to take. I wind up at the University of Texas at San Antonio because I'm told by a good professor there that I could be done with undergraduate bullshit in two years.
Now, UTSA isn't exactly *bad*, but... the school started to serve first-generation minority college students and only recently aspired to be a high-ranking university. Some genius figured out that the U Cal system kicked copious quantities of ass and had several schools that really showed what education should be, and then looked at the UT system with the genius idea of having all of the schools start improving. UT Austin, the main school, is top-notch by any standards; I was accepted there as well, but I really wanted out of the undergraduate stuff so that I could move on to the really interesting material that had to wait for grad school and turned that offer down. So I go to the 'rising star' of the system... and see just how much rising it has to do. There are great teachers and students, but they're very well hidden among dumbasses, worthless floating egos, low standards, and the College of Business, so it took me a good while to find the really challenging and worthwhile material and I was not amused.
I started as a physics major, but the university at some point decided that the physics department had too much potential and started firing people for no good reason at all. We had a couple of people go back to MIT (not go to MIT, or come from MIT... go back to MIT), a guy who worked with Steven Weinberg (incredibly important cosmologist) go back to working with Weinberg, and recently refused tenure to the badass who got his Ph.D. under Weinberg, made the physics department as badass as it is and brought about the Ph.D., brought about a serious amount of tablet-PC usage (tablet salesmen have said repeatedly that they've never seen another school do what UTSA sciences do with them), and did truly impressive research in theoretical physics... for political reasons. By my junior 'year' (my freshman 'year' was my high school courseload and a 17-hour summer, which put me at 35 hours; my sophomore 'year' was a 21-hour semester and a pair of courses finished by CLEP) it was clear that I wouldn't be graduating anytime soon because so few classes were offered.
So I go math, and since (1) more classes are offered and (2) a lot of electives are available (as one is basically expected to minor in something badass; I chose physics, as I already had a lot of it done) I'm on track to graduate very quickly, provided I don't go bonkers and lose it completely. Between 18-21 hour semesters, full summers, and CLEP tests I wind up only needing to take two classes this semester... so I sign up for four.
Because there were few classes offered that I really had interest in, and classes I had to take blocked a few out, this was my easy semester; however, one of my classes was an utter waste of existence, another contained nothing that the prereq and the prereq's prereq hadn't covered better, and a third was far too easy because I just win at abstract algebra, so I had a really boring and disappointing semester for the most part. Abstract Algebra is fun, but a bit slow... so I'm bored. The highlight of the semester was the Special Studies in problem-solving - you know you're in for a good time when an analytic number theorist (analytic number theory is the field that made the guy from A Beautiful Mind go insane, for the record, and is the field featured in the film Pi) from Princeton goes postal on four unsuspecting undergraduates and makes sure they're challenged past their breaking point's breaking point. That one class made up for all the boredom I had gone through at UTSA to get to it, and I'm honestly annoyed that it's over, but I also had one oddball hour of my physics minor (basically because they changed the lower-division physics track from two four-hour courses to three three-hour courses and I was missing an hour because one of my classes, which should have been four-hour, was only three) resting on it so that was nice and pressured too.
Then... finals come. The waste-of-existence class, Mathematical Statistics, didn't have a 'final' so much as a 'last test' and because it was basically plugging shit into formulas I had no idea how I'd do. Problem solving... no final, I just owe the guy a few more problems just for my own standards so that's done. Abstract Algebra I didn't need to take, as I was guaranteed a B, but I wanted a bloody A and a bit more fun with that class so I took it. The completely unoriginal one - Real Analysis II - was the worst mix of boring and pain-in-the-ass-detailed-bullshit imaginable and I didn't know if I had dumbed my answers down enough. Analysis is basically what grew from the seed of the rigorous exploration of calculus - limits, continuity, derivatives and integrals, et cetera - and while I had seen everything before (and a few things I shouldn't have... yes, that's right, I read ahead, you bastards who think I can't possibly understand what it means to be in the uniform closure of a space because you didn't lecture for a week on it, what the fuck are you going do do about it?) I was concerned that I actually seemed like I knew what I was talking about and didn't just take the lectures up the ass and shit them back out on paper like a kindergartener.
So what does that leave? A couple of weeks of not knowing where existence may occur a week in the future... grad school here or working there and moving here or staying where I am and going broke or just tossing it all to the side and screaming about Tube Screamers on the side of the street for donations. Fun, right? Wrongfuckingo. I'm already an insomniac who sees little cartoon badgers flying around and wreaking havoc on exposed bra straps and hairpieces, I don't need more of this shit.
I'm given a good chunk of time where I don't even know if I've earned my degree. I know that if anyone graduating with that degree this year has earned it, it's me... but I don't deal well with bullshit like 'Mathematical Statistics' and 'Eleventh fucking semester of overhyped calculus you've seen in three years, not counting your physics work', so how do I know I've gotten it? I've planned way too much around getting this thing done with in two years, and I already fucked up by not being able to apply to a lot of grad schools - turns out I was a lot less registered for the GRE math than I thought I was - so those are out of the question for a year already, what happens if something goes wrong?
I basically had until two this afternoon to go through every emergency situation in existence to save my ass and prepare for all of them at the same time. Granted, I won't be running out of handcuffs anytime soon, which I suppose is nice, but I wouldn't recommend trying to step your death cults up to another level when funds run dry and you need a new source.
So what happens when I check my grades this afternoon?
Looks like I win. Bachelor's in Math, Physics Minor, three months after turning 20.
So... thanks for reading this, had to get it off my back more than anything else, I should be quite a bit more civil and sensible now.
Jeff
I would run with the Bachelor's degree, never looking back 
