#I envy your ability to handle numbers without them getting tangled in your brain

[magpiemirroring]

I do not find solving math problems particularly enjoyable and never have. I have never really experienced that joy and sense of pleasure from contemplating a nice/clever/beautiful equation or the satisfaction of solving a an interesting math problem. I envy those of you who get to have those experiences! Sometime in middle school I lost whatever connection to math I had and I nearly flunked algebra in 8th grade which kinda did a number on my relationship with math. Luckily, I did not have my heart set on a career in a math-focused subject and went off to study art instead! But I've been trying to stop saying I Hate Math, so here's some experiences with math that were positive for me a Non-Math Person:

10th Grade Math Class (Geometry? I think?) where the teacher always set aside time at the end of class for us to start on our homework. We were encouraged not only to ask him questions, but to talk to each other. This was great. Teamed up with a couple of other weird kids in class and took turns asking each other about stuff we got stuck on and trying to explain the ones we felt like we got right. I got solid Bs that year! Explaining things and working with peers gave me back a lot of math confidence and I started to connect to math again! (This was utterly torpedoed next year, lolsob!)

Physics. Ironically, despite being Bad At Math, I really liked Physics class. It was very very basic physics, but I think having concrete ideas that made sense helped a lot. Math felt like it had substance and weight that I could hold onto with my mind and that was very exciting!

Honestly, there's a lot of math concepts I find fascinating. I used to to zone out in math class staring at posters about the fibonacci sequence or fractals or get distracted pondering prime numbers. So I've read a fair number of "math concepts for people that don't like math" books that talked about trying to conceptualize infinities or the 4th dimension, or different counting base systems, or weird topology hijinks. It was interesting to see how those ideas were expressed in mathematical notation even if I couldn't do enough math to do anything with these things. I stayed up way too late one night when I was in art school happily trying to visualize some of things I was reading about. I'm suffering from burnout right now and reading is hard much less reading things that challenge my brain like that, but I do look forward to shoving my brain at concepts again someday and rotating them in my head like the weirdest blorbo.

I'm a digital artist. I haven't had to do algebra in awhile. But math underlies the tools I use and can inspire interesting work so I I am trying to find reasons to appreciate it. Geometry and other mathematical ideas can be used to codify ideas of balance and shape and form in a composition. Math can be used to describe the rules of perspective. Math is a language that can be translated into the language of color and motion that I speak, so that like a translated poem, I can understand the ideas, even if they're not quite the same in translation.

I didn't wanna derail the other post but I still wanna spread some love for my favourite subject...

Reblog if you've ever felt genuine joy or excitement from doing and/or thinking about math