We took an aptitude exam at the office today. Clearly, a lot of us in publishing think alike, because we all hemmed and hawed the moment we realized the test involved a significant amount of math.
“But we chose to work in publishing because there shouldn’t be any math involved,” someone groaned. Several echoed her sentiments, myself included.
But after the initial round of complaining, we settled down to answer the questions, complete with scratch paper. I hadn’t done a serious aptitude test since taking the GRE; the others were even worse, since the last exams they took were college admissions tests. Charmagne our beauty editor wailed, “This is bad for my self-esteem!”
It wasn’t bad at first; there was mostly basic algebra and problem solving. Then maybe a few permutations, and some numerical logic. Then fractions (which I hate with a passion). As I clicked on the key to submit the more difficult math-related portion of the exam, the computer screen went blank—and all my answers were gone. Had I been in an actual entrance exam, I would’ve had a meltdown.
I redid the answers and moved on to vocabulary and word association. Most were easy enough, but I encountered a word I hadn’t read in a while: caudal. It’s not a word you use in everyday matters (by the way, it means ‘near the tail’ or something like that), but there’s no way that I’ll be forgetting that word soon because ‘caudal’ is the last name of the dude I had a crush on in my prepubescent years. It’s a funny, silly story: he was my busmate back in the fourth grade, and that crush stretched on until third year high school. Even when I was sort of going out with someone back then. The ultimate example of unrequited love (though it wasn’t love), I haven’t seen him in over 11 years.
How did his last name help in the exam? Well of course, being the infatuated teenager back them, I Googled him. He didn’t turn up in any valid search engine results (just checked now—he still doesn’t, to be honest), but there were a lot of references about the ‘caudal fin.’ His name appeared in a lot of biology-related charts, like so:
A diagram of a fish depicting the caudal fin
So that was my Slumdog Millionaire moment for the day. Hey K. Caudal*, if ever you read this, don’t worry—I’m not stalking you, and I’m perfectly happy with my boyfriend now. The reason I can blog about that embarrassing crush so casually nowadays is that I’m secure with my past, and I have no hang-ups whatsoever about that particular issue.
It also helps that the boyfriend is cuter than the former crush. Not necessary, but good to know anyway.
* I had initially written his whole name, but a friend pointed out that if he ever does a vanity search on Google, this would be one of the top results. Not that I mind it if he ever sees this, but I’d rather that it wouldn’t be one of the top results (I checked it earlier and it already was).
I look like a manyak here. haha.
No you don’t, I look like a fangirl who’s scaring off someone she’s stalking so he’s leaning away :p