Finding Your Way…
Calculus 1. Check. Calculus 2. Check. Calculus 3. Check. Mathematical modeling. Check. Linear algebra. Check. Modern algebra. Check. Differential equations. Check. Probability & statistics. Check & check. …I have only three “checks” left before I receive a piece of paper saying I’m a somebody in the political world.
At least that’s the mentality I had for awhile before I realized why the heck I’m putting myself through a mathematics degree…
We all go through that BiG QuEsTiOn phase in our lives; that moment when you realize the thing you’ve been forcing to work for so many years is actually not the right path for you. And that’s okay. But it’s taken me about a year to accept my change. This is a personal story.
My freshman year in college my mind was so..well..fresh, so ready to soak up All The Maths! My interests were all over the place: fractal dimension, fluid & air dynamics, physics, graph theory, topology, sacred geometry, knot theory. I’ve been fascinated with how this world fits together and, more impressively, the constant dance of each system moving as a whole. I wanted to learn it all! I even stretched into areas like molecular structures, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mathematics, cause & effects of human behavior, sociology, economics, anatomy. ANYTHING that incorporated mathematical thinking in some form or fashion. But by the time I was a sophomore I barely had any energy left to breathe! So I made it by doing the bare minimum for a while. Perhaps it’s not the best decision to present your faults, but from time to time it shows us all that we are just…human.
So what happened?
Well, all my interests has one underlying pattern: analyzing theoretical possibilities at its most fundamental level. AKA, the infinite! No wonder I was drowning. I love exploring possibilities, but I am not a theorist. Maybe one day, but not yet.
Now I still consider myself a child of wonder when it comes to mathematics, but its not all rainbow daisies and frolicking unicorns. There’s hard work involved. There’s pain and sweat and tears involved. My relationship with mathematics was on the rocks and I thought about breaking up with it for an insane moment there. So I took some time away from the usual, I took time to myself for awhile and not what mathematics demanded of me. I matured more during that time, this time, than I ever had/have before. I am pleased to say that our relationship is so strong that I couldn’t possibly live my life without it. So we made up (good thing too because that graduation date is approaching), but there were conditions. Instead of beating myself up for not being the theoretical analyst I thought I was preparing to be in grad school, I took the path as a mathematical communicator. I am a mentor for those who cannot see the connections I can; I have a gift of visually expressing these fundamental concepts that are so important in logic. Sometimes all it takes is a new approach, a different way of looking at something that was seemingly so complicated to understand why it is what it is. I am just another piece of the puzzle, but an important one. We have the ability to connect ideas in milliseconds with our advancements in technology, but we need to know how to use our tools. Like my crazy professor says, “The day they make a calculator that can do mathematics I want to be first in line.” Anyone can compute, but it takes a special care to do MaThemaTics.