Hmmm... I can't quite fault the guy if that's what he really wants in life - I put about 3 months (an entire summer) into unpaid studying for grad school prelim

Hmmm... I can't quite fault the guy if that's what he really wants in life - I put about 3 months (an entire summer) into unpaid studying for grad school prelims (i.e. I didn't request a teaching assignment for the summer) and ended up being the only person to pass all three exams at once that fall (Note: I think there were a couple people that passed the exams by spreading them out over the space of a year or two). On the other hand, this seems like something you can only easily do if you are young / no kids / or have tons of savings (rich)... (I strongly doubt my wife would put up with me doing this now) so hopefully for the crop of people that want to work there it is not the norm / maybe their age diversity would benefit from making applicants work record count for a bit more or something, idk.