One of the nominal goals I had for my furlough was to prepare for my next two actuarial exams and today I started studying again after at least a year from last having actively tried to expand my knowledge of actuarial math.  I spent a solid four hours catching up on the basics of integration, followed by the basics of derivation and at one low point the basics of order of operation.  This last point was the computational equivalent of standing up after sitting for a while and kind of losing your balance but the fact that it happened at all made my inner calculator cry a little bit.  I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion that I’ll probably reiterate a thousand times over the next few months: Math hard.