Perspective is a beautiful thing

I started this blog partly out of hatred for ETS. After taking the GRE yesterday, that hatred has grown.  Exponentially. (Yup, that’s right ETS, I’m using a mathematical term…perhaps I could get some bonus points for that? No? Well all right then, back to hating on you.)

For those who don’t know, I will (er…or perhaps after my abominable quantitative section performance, the term ‘was going to’ is more apt) apply to PhD programs for both Applied Linguistics and International Education Policy. And this whole time I’ve been trying to study for the math section, I’ve been wondering: what does knowing how to compute the area of a circle based on the area of a square that is partially inside the circle have anything to do with my ability to succeed in that kind of PhD program? Why do I have to know which of four given algebraic equations intersects the y-axis? Isn’t the only math that I should know for such PhD programs statistics? (And I believe I got the only two statistics-based questions on the GRE yesterday correct.)  At this point, I’m sure some of you are wondering why I don’t just study more and take the GRE again. And if I were in the U.S., that would be an option. But here, the GRE (and only the paper-based test) is offered just twice a year, the next time being in April, unfortunately a few months after the graduate school deadlines. 

So, what’s a mathematically-challenged girl to do? Well, I’ve waited this long to apply to PhD programs, what’s one more year? And I think my verbal scores on the exam may assuage my feelings of despair that I am in fact stupider than I thought.  However, more importantly, I’m alive and back at home. No, not that I came close to offing myself while studying math. And no, I also didn’t nearly die during the exam (although there were moments when I felt the need to violently act out my frustrations). What I’m talking about is just the pure joy of not dying on Friday night.

I wish at this moment I could begin a hilarious story about how I went out drinking on Friday night to abate my fears about the GRE the next morning. That story could not only make me laugh in retrospect but also conveniently explain my poor performance on the math section! But alas, no. Friday evening I was on a bus, taking the four-hour ride to the capital where the exam was held.  What was so special about this bus ride? Well, for starters, Malawi has only one type of bus that is comfortable, and this is the coach bus that only travels between Lilongwe (the capital) and Blantyre (where I live). Get on any other bus and there are people, animals, sacks of grain and vegetables seated, standing, and stacked everywhere. But on the coach, there are comfortable seats, air-conditioning, and soft drinks. Well, Friday night the air-conditioning was broken on the coach bus. And it’s been hot. So, I am already sweating and bothered as I wait for the rest of the passengers to board. I see a student of mine walking down the aisle. I nod and say ‘hi.’ I had just taught her earlier in the day, and not that I don’t like my students, but I’d rather not see them during my free time. She stops by my seat, looks at her ticket, looks at the seat number, looks back down at her ticket. Yup, she’s got the seat next to me. What are the odds? (Hey, those are one of the few types of math problems I’m good at! But, I’m so done with math right now.)

We both laugh at our bad luck – I mean, she doesn’t want to sit next to her teacher for four hours – and then we each put our iPods on and are quiet the entire trip. In fact, I don’t even see her once we get off the bus in Lilongwe, to say bye.  I’m too busy trying to find a taxi driver.

Normally when I exit a bus in Malawi at a major depot, there are swarms of taxi drivers who accost me. Not Friday night. There’s a major fuel shortage at the moment, and particularly in the capital, people just cannot get fuel or have to buy it for over double or triple the price on the black market. So, the dearth of taxis was understandable. However, I didn’t expect to have to walk around the parking lot in search of one. And when I finally found one, I didn’t expect him to quote me a price much higher than what it normally costs to get to the lodge where I stay when I’m in the capital. But, considering it was dark and getting late and there were no other taxis in sight, I agreed. (And here I should mention that a taxi in Malawi is not an actual taxi as most of us know them. They are, to borrow the Costa Rican terminology, ‘pirate taxis.’  Just someone’s regular car, with no sign to let you know it’s a taxi.)

I try to open the passenger door to his car. And I have to try again. And again. I think it’s locked, but on the fourth attempt, it pries open, creaking as I struggle to pull it far enough open for me to slide into the car. I’m not quite sure what kind of damage has been done to the side of the car, and I can’t see it because it’s dark (there is not a plethora of street lights anywhere in Malawi).  I get in, fumble for the seatbelt and then attempt to buckle up. The driver grabs the seatbelt from me. ‘Sweet,’ I think, ‘he’s nice enough to buckle me in.’ Uh…no. He takes the seatbelt and wraps it around the stick shift a couple of times. Yup, that’s not gonna hold in an accident.

When traveling and living abroad, there have been many times when I’ve had to make important decisions regarding my safety and well-being, often in just a couple of seconds. My first night in Japan, lost and confused and with no hotel for the night, a stranger in the train station offered to take me in for the night. On the island of Rhodes, a random person on a near-deserted cobblestone street asked me to join him for an espresso.  And trapped in Panama due to the Chiquita banana factory strikes, I got on a tiny, overloaded boat that went out into the ocean around the coast to illegally drop me on a beach in Costa Rica.  Comparatively, Friday night wasn’t that risky. I knew the lodge was close. Or it would have been had the driver not been a complete idiot.

I tell the driver where I am going, but he has never heard of the lodge (and, in fact, keeps repeating the name of another lodge, even after I tell him several times, “no”). So, I call my usual capital city taxi driver and ask him to explain the directions to this driver. Directions communicated, we are on our way. Slowly. Because the car barely seems to be able to run. And the petrol needle is nearly on E. And my door rattles as we drive. And the driver seems to be squinting and leaning toward the windshield, as if he can’t really see where he is going.

He finally pulls up to a lodge gate, and guess what? It’s the lodge that he kept repeating to me. No no no, I say and insist that we call my taxi driver again (who, by the way, was not able to pick me up due to other work). This driver wouldn’t call again, so I get out the business card of the lodge to show him the name and address. I think he finally knows where he’s going, so we’re off again into the dark and quiet streets of this neighborhood. Next lodge he brings me to is again the incorrect lodge. At this point, I’m getting slightly frustrated and wonder if we’re actually going to run out of gas before getting me to my accommodations. Again, he refuses to talk to my regular driver but instead asks the rather confused gate guard of this lodge where the correct lodge is. He gets some directions, and we head off yet again until – that’s right, you guessed it – he starts to turn down a road with a lodge sign that is again not the correct lodge. At this point, I call Alex, my regular taxi driver, and have him give directions again to this guy. We’ve driven all around the neighborhood but somehow have managed to avoid the street that the lodge is on, but he finally finds it a few minutes later. It is hard to pay him the equivalent of $15 for the trip, even knowing that petrol is costing about that much per gallon on the black market. But I’m tired and in need of a shower and have been up since 5:30 a.m., so I give him the cash. I’m sure neither of us learned anything from the experience.

But what I can do is blame ETS for that dreadful taxi ride. Because I was only there in order to take the GRE, and we know how that went. But I survived both, and that’s what matters. As a friend of mine in Japan used to say when things got a bit rough or frustrating: “Hey, you’re not on fire.” And that has always been true.

Perspective is a beautiful thing.