Prepping to become a despotic ruler

Ok, S, Yv and Sage Broccoli know about my aspirations to become a despotic ruler. I really need to stop blogging and buckle down and get on with the first part of my five-part plan in order to achieve this hefty goal. (f(x) =1/y, where x=number of blog posts, and y=how much stuff I'm supposed to be doing instead of blogging or trolling around on FB.)

However, yesterday, I spoke with an expert in this field, and he was so positive, that I'm newly inspired and exited again about this for a change and need to document this.

Truth be told, I've been a tad frustrated, b/c the bar is so damn "high" (Ok, to call getting an 800 on the math GRE a "high bar" is a joke for some, I know, but my brain has really atrophied that much. Ten years ago, this would've been the least of my problems), the hoops are so so many, the timeline to attain this ultimate goal is just daunting, and if I'm serious about this, I need to actually rearrange my work schedule and reduce hours so I can drive all the way down to SJState during the middle of the workday and take a few "remedial" courses in despotic regime theory, because my local community college doesn't offer upper level courses in despotic regimes, and I just don't feel like paying $6,000-$7,000 per class to take it at my own university.

Plus my dear friend S thinks that I'm "wasting my life for the next few years" and that I should instead be focusing my energies on finding a girlfriend or husband, because in spite of women's lib and feminism, etc., I guess our ultimate goal in life and joie de vivre is still to find someone you love, marry and perpetuate the gene pool. Humph. If only things were that easy. Not that I don't want to do this or obsess about this from time to time, but I don't necessarily want to plan my life around this either. If it happens it happens, and if it doesn't, well, that's that. But being told things like this makes one reevaluate how much one wants to be a megalomaniac and wonder whether I'm cut out for this vibrant living thing that Yv and Sage Broccoli and I have discussed. It's a lovely concept--to be vibrantly alive rather than merely comfortable and complacent--but just what exactly this entails still eludes me.

My advisor was also much more sanguine about job prospects and opportunities in the field, which was heartening, even if I'm still not sure if both my heart and mind are committed to this idea. But for the time being, I'm going to take a plunge and see.

So next week begins the chaos, the ensuing business (that's busy-ness, not business), and I might change my mind about this and get frustrated again when I find out once again that I don't get stuff like uppersemicontinuous this and that and I've learned that I've forgotten what one does with eigenvectors. Gosh, I'm getting apprehensive just thinking about this. . ..

But yesterday, I was in high spirits about this, so I'm writing this mostly as a reminder to myself for those days where I'm back to dithering about. My advisor gave me some helpful tips about programs to look into, and suggested courses of study that would give me the most options for becoming the leader of a despotic regime. He thinks that since despotic rulers don't make money like lawyers and doctors, no one should really have to pay to study to become one, which is good news. (My secondary goal in life is to keep going to schools without paying for them.) He also thought that given my background, I shouldn't be scared away by the math. (Despotic rulers are very calculating, so it turns out they need a fair amount of math. Surprising, eh?) And much as I would love to go to a top tier school, realistically speaking, I think I need to look at the mid-tier ones. So instead of the usual suspects (yes, everyone aspires to get into MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc.), he gave me programs that were "pretty good"--still in the top 15, but below the top 5. And if I don't get that elusive 800, I can alway go lower, too.

So I guess I should go study while I'm in high spirits and am sufficiently motivated.