It's About Time

I swear his eyes got wider every time I saw him. His face a little paler. His voice catching each time I made even the slightest of movements. I readjusted for the hundredth time, glancing at the clock and cursing myself for not having the restraint to keep from tracking every minute that had elapsed.


While time, scientifically, is quantitative—every minute has 60 seconds and every hour has 60 minutes. No more, no less—any pregnant woman can tell you that time moves in correlation to how bad you have to pee. The worse you have to pee, the slower time moves. There’s no tricking the clock into thinking you don’t have to pee. Somehow it knows.


And so there I sat, day after day, willing the fifty longest minutes of my life to pass so that I could just get up and go pee.


Sure, I could have just gotten up and waddled my way down the (tiny) aisles and out the door, but I was afraid that the professor would go into complete cardiac arrest if I were to make any unexpected moves and so I fidgeted and shifted, lamenting the fact that I was there at all. It’s not easy fitting in as a 28 year old, nine month pregnant lady in an undergraduate math class, where references to Doogie Howser fell on blank stares. I certainly didn’t need to bring more attention to myself. My ever-bulging belly was doing a fine job already.


It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Four years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I changed my major from Biomedical Engineering to Mathematics because I would only have to pass a simple test to graduate instead of doing a senior project, thus freeing up my time to carve out my new life as a stay-at-home mom.


It wasn’t until I had only a year left that I realized maybe mathematics was not my forte, and perhaps I would’ve been better served had I chosen Underwater Basket Weaving or Doily Making for Dummies as my course of study. However, I was so close, and so I pressed forward.


I signed up for the elusive test in November of that year, giving myself the opportunity to retake it in April if needed and still be on track to graduate. But I was optimistic. How hard could a multiple choice math test be?


Out of 66 questions, I answered 25. Of those 25, I only correctly answered 8. Since points are deducted for answering incorrectly, my final score was a mere four. Four out of 66 is not a good indicator that I deserve a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.


Chalking the initial test score up to nerves, I vowed to do better in April. I did do better. I scored an eight instead, but I fell short of the needed nine to graduate. I mean, who can’t score a nine on a test that has 66 questions? Basic probability states that by just randomly answering questions, you‘d most likely get higher than a nine. But I couldn’t leave something so crucial up to chance. And so, third time’s a charm, I signed up for the November test again, vowing to study more. Now that I was no longer taking classes, I should be able to find the time to study all the math concepts I had been taught since the beginning of my educational career in first grade.


That third test showed that I had indeed become dumber over the course of the six months that had elapsed between tests. I got the results roughly a week before my husband and I embarked on a weeklong cruise celebrating my graduation, slightly marring the experience.


Confident that I had the test strategies figured out, I signed up yet again to take the test. Since it's only offered twice a year, I would have to wait until April--a full year after I was suppose to have graduated. I was five weeks pregnant with my second child and knew God could not continue punishing me with these tests. I should’ve known better when I was seated next to the steroid pusher who had somehow convinced the test proctors that he was diabetic and therefore needed two bananas, an apple, a bagel, and a tub of cream cheese lest he should lapse into a diabetic coma during the three hour duration of the test. If the unnatural looking muscles on the slight 5'4" student didn't tip the proctors off, what stock could I invest in the credibility of this test?


The only thing the fourth test brought me was severe nausea and a broken toe from kicking the concrete steps leading into the house when the results arrived six weeks later.


Shameless pleading and begging to the academic counselor and later, the dean of the mathematics department, finally gave me an alternate solution. I could take one more undergraduate course in mathematics and they’d be happy to award me my degree. Elated, I jumped at the chance. Clearly, I was not going to pass that test and anything they could offer me was an answer to many a prayer. It wasn’t until I had left the dean’s office that I realized that I would be attending class nine months pregnant. That I could, in fact, give birth during lecture since my due date was three days before the final was scheduled.


I didn’t let those little details deter me. I was going to graduate if it killed me. And so, day after day, I sat in class. The first few weeks, it wasn’t obvious that I was pregnant. But as the semester wore on, my shirts became tighter, my belly bigger. The walk from my car to the building was excruciating, punctuated by the stares of other students, carelessly walking and laughing. I had to be extra cautious. If I fell, I wouldn’t be able to get back up on my own and I’m confident I would’ve died—degree-less—from humiliation on the spot.


I waffled between trying to reschedule the final for after the holiday break and playing dumb. “What baby?” I imagined myself saying if the professor asked. But, smartly, he never did. Pregnant women were not so common on my side of campus. Family and Consumer science-yes, but Mathematics and Engineering-no. I’m not entirely sure that he had ever had seen a pregnant lady in class, and I wasn’t sure how to branch the subject. I found it easiest just to play stupid.


Each day, the professor would arrive at the doorway and sweep his eyes around the classroom. When his eyes fell on mine, I would see the dread creep into them; the color leave his face; the unasked questions “is today the day? Will she go into labor during my lecture? Will I be called upon to deliver a baby in my classroom?” looming in the air. I would imagine that the days he didn’t see me, he would jovially bounce into the room, as though a heavy load was lifted off his shoulders. Perhaps that’s when he was most entertaining—the days I was absent—because I certainly didn’t see that side of him when I was present.


On one poignant occasion, I actually met him in the doorway—him on the way in and me on the way to the bathroom. It was obvious we weren’t both going to fit through the doorway at the same time and so I turned to the side. He backed out of the doorway and into the hall, giving me a wide berth in which to maneuver my swollen body, muttering “sorry” the entire time.


It was about six weeks before my due date when I could no longer fit behind the desk. I congratulated myself on a well-fought pregnancy. I thought for sure, at about six months, I would be scouting the nearby offices for a free-standing chair I could set up in the corner of the classroom, but I had made it to nearly eight. If I turned just right, I could still sit on the chair attached to the desk and not have to cart in a camp chair from home.


Three weeks later, I gave birth to a healthy eight pound baby girl on what can only be described as the most perfect day concerning my math class. We had just been let out for the Thanksgiving holiday, giving me four days in which to recover. With three weeks left until the final, I had ample time to study for the test as well as attend a few of the remaining lectures.
The first lecture I was back, the professor stopped at the doorway to do his cursory glance-over of the classroom. When his eyes settled on mine, they bulged from their sockets. Relief washed over his face and he, as I suspected he did when I was absent, jovially bounced into the room to begin the day’s lecture.


I am convinced that it was those appearances I made after the birth of the baby that sealed my fate as a college graduate since my test and homework scores did not reflect the generous grade I received.


Lots of people go to school for eight years. We call them doctors. A mere nine and a half years after graduating high school, I was finally a college graduate. No doctor, but a graduate nonetheless.