I am going into my final year of studying mathematics at university and I hotly feel like I am being strung along by a beautiful woman whose jaws reveal her true nature of being a shark.
I did not perform well in classes. When studying analysis I wanted to study algebra, and when studying algebra I wanted to go premed.
I do love math. I spend so much time learning math but not for school work. School work has to be career oriented and the math major at my school failed to help me with that at all. And now I have to pick up the pieces of this mess. I am motivated to learn math but not to learn anything remotely employable. I desire employability but I have no desire to become better at math.
Isn’t that weird?
I am studying sheaf categories right now when I should be studying physics. It’s like I’m looking down the eyes of the fate and seeing what lay for me but once again choosing the unknown forces that these symbols seem to obey instead of real forces to go become an electrical engineer or an actuary.
And I love math for it but I hate the way I’ve studied it.
I never loved puzzles like many of us do. I loved mystery novels and philosophy. That is what mathematics is to me.
It’s a game where these symbols and diagrams are divine scripture - but scripture with Da Vinci codes and conspiracies, and truth, and fundamentalness.
I am jealous of everyone who is satisfied with biology or chemistry, or even engineering and finance.
But this pursuit matters more to me than anything. I am an evangelist in a Stephen King book.
I will not get a PhD or go onto graduate school. I must prepare for my third actuary exam and hope that this rotting job market doesn’t leave a stump of stool in my mailbox. But I will never stop perusing this mystery.
And I do regret studying mathematics but I could not have had it any other way.