working on take-home exam

the dreaded week is well under way. the week of the MATH 790 take-home exam number 3. Last night I spent five hours working on one problem and got nowhere. there are ten problems total and I've only solved three completely. About three more should be easy and I'm working on those now, but the remaining four I still have no idea how to solve. One of those was the one I spent five hours on, by far the hardest since the others I think I know at least where to start. The hardest one I thought that about before yesterday, but then turned out that the natural approach yielded nothing. Or at least I don't see if the natural approach is even right or not. (That's precisely what I mean by accomplishing nothing on it: I'm not even sure if my approach gives me a solution or not.) Luckily I have all day tomorrow to devote to this thing. The test is due at 1:00pm on Friday. So i have roughly 38 hours to work on it minus, say, being liberal, 10 hours for sleep = 28 hours, and minus all of friday morning since I have to teach and go to class and whatnot, so that's like 24 hours left, which sounds like a lot until you remember that I said I worked for five hours on a problem and got nowhere. Hopefully some sort of enlightenment will come before then. Quite honestly I think mathematics should be considered a religion because I feel like a monk meditating over sacred texts and symbols day and night depriving myself of sleep trying to divine a meaning that the guru says I should be getting out of them. Right now the floor of my apartment is filled with notes and sheets of paper displaying all sorts of cryptic things chanted out to us in the holy halls of the Divine Department. Furthermore, one is, as a mere postulant [as I am] embarased to admit while within the presence of the novice students [those holy ones who have passed the qualifying exams] or the ordained ones [those holiest ones with PhDs] to any activity, e.g. watching a movie or reading a work of literature, that doesn't bring one closer to mathematical enlightenment because you are looked upon with suspicion. I can't wait until this week is over.