A Red Letter Day

Today is a significant day. It is the eve of another big game in which Mizzou must either "nut up or shut up", it is the first truly cold day in CoMo, and it is also the fifth friday this month which is great. Those things being as extraordinary as they are still aren't the major reason today is a red letter day for me, the big reason is that I am sitting outside of a jiffy-lube waiting to get an oil change. The fact that I am outside of the jiffy lube isn't a big deal, it's about 80 degrees inside and I am ensconced in wool so the outdoors feel better. The important thing about this oil change is that it is 12:09 on a friday, during the meeting time of Math 3000, a class which I have gone into a great detail about on this very blog. I am not in that class because today I met with the excellent Dr. Morphurgo and filled out the papers to withdraw from it, immediately afterwards I set up a meeting to transfer into the Statistics department. Had I stayed in the course I have a good feeling that I could have pulled off a D or maybe even a C, I have managed to do stranger the things. The grade wasn't the reason I dropped, nor was the difficulty although both played a big role in decide to investigate the path of withdrawing. The main reason I chose to no longer be in this course boils down to my current philosophies in life, "do things that scare you" and "do not let a day go by unhappy". Most traditional things don't scare me very much, even basements and demons, however I'll admit that the idea of not being a math major scared me, as did "quitting" a course. Math has been the plan ever since I took Algebra II with one of my all time favorites, Mrs. Jones. I had just gotten out of geometry with Mr. Rose, a class which convinced me that I was essentially worthless when it came to math; the only thing I got out of the class was that Rose taught another class called "IB Higher Level Math", destiny was cast. The relationship I had with Ms. Jones was basically that she understood my test grades in no way reflected my actual intelligence or even my familiarity with the material of the class, unlike other teachers she realized that a B student might have higher than a B intellect. This was critical because she was the teacher who I needed to sign my paperwork to take the aforementioned HL math class in lieu of the required grade and thankfully she complied. For the next 2 years of my life I was in class with 8 other students studying college level mathematics every monday wednesday and friday. It is impossible to overstate the impact that class had on the way I process problems, my work ethic, and most of all my confidence. After passing my exit exams for HL I came to Mizzou tested into calc IIH and enrolled in the math dept, just accomplishing what seemed like another step on the ladder towards a B.S./MS/PHD in math. The reason I hopped off that ladder ties in directly with being happy everyday. Recently as I continued up the rungs of the ladder I started to see the "Ivory Tower" I was climbing towards, the infamous achilles heel of pure mathematicians. Call it a product of naivety but for some reason I assumed that the ivory tower was going to be far away, a place only post-docs resided. The truth of the matter is that as a first semester sophomore I was already going through the metal detectors and having my credentials checked to enter. The issue is that I never wanted to enter, the idea of having to give up on my personal life and my other interests to pursue one field sounds awful to me, as does not being able to talk to anyone other than fellow mathematicians about what I'm studying. I started to see the evidence of needed to subscribe to that lifestyle to succeed in math 3000, and thus I decided it wasn't for me and probably never will be. My relationship with math now gets to consist of taking only classes I enjoy and have interest in, I can casually read through a textbook to look at the ideas without worrying about whether or not I am able to prove the required theorems, its great. What drew me into my HL class so much was the puzzles and problem solving. Using calculus you can integrate the function f(X)=(h/b)x from 0 to b to get .5bh which is the area of a generic triangle. You can also take the cross product of the vectors <0,h,0> and to get bh which is the square formed by the vectors, so simply take half of that to get .5bh which again is the area of a generic triangle. I could give several more of those derivations touching on statistics, trig, and geometry. The point of those examples is that my relationship with math is based on connections and problem solving, the beauty of a solution rather than the formality of it. I believe that I can still keep this relationship just in the Stats dept. instead. My life is just too short to spend any time studying things that I don't like or are keeping me from happiness. One could argue that this decision will affect my future happiness because I will be entering a less lucrative field and they might be right. The issue is that nothing except for this instant is certain, no matter how much I try I cannot guarantee what my life will be life in 5 minutes much less 5 years, the only thing it makes sense to try and control are things that are immediately impacting me, what I'm listening too, who my friends are, what classes I'm in, etc. 

For the few of you reading this blog to keep up on my personal life I've been pretty good, things have been a bit rough lately but I'll be damned if anything is going to keep me down. Specifically I have been enjoying basketball lately. The nba started up tuesday so between catching up on blogs, fantasy, and trying to watch games I've had quite a bit of stuff too enjoy. I've also been going to the rec a couple times a week to play with Shawn which has been good, its always nice to have at least one guy there who isn't a complete tool. I've been playing alright, my shins have still been killing me but chugging aspirin as my post-game routine seems to help a little bit. I'm exam free for the next 2 weeks, it's halloween, and I feel free. Go out and love life readers, you are only guaranteed one.


90% of the songs I link are radiohead or kanye but whatevs. Fuck the haters.