#Yeah it is actually pretty cool to be able to plot WILDLY varying data points on the same graph

[stardustedknuckles]

I'm starting to think that if you're good at math and you like the way math makes sense and it doesn't crush your soul to learn it, you might should maybe probably see how far you can get learning math and see if you can do a career with it.

If you'd told me ten years ago as senior in college (hey what the fuck) that one day I would be sitting at my desk at home furiously scribbling equations and getting dopamine from correctly solving them - and not only that, but not being frustrated by the little mistakes but just learning to watch out for them...

I feel like the standard finish there is "I would've laughed at you." but like. I had such a good college algebra teacher that I was in fact briefly a math major. I was inspired. It all made sense. But I was at college on a full ride scholarship and if I made below a B in any class, I would be put on probation and if it happened again I would lose that scholarship.

Is it any fucking wonder that I hedged my bets and stuck with English? It's the same reason I stopped learning German even though I didn't mind the idea of retaking a class to be sure I understood it. I was somewhat trapped and afraid to use my one single second chance. And now I'm freshly 31 looking back and going... Okay but I CAN do this. I've always been able to do this. I just have lived my life for so long by the belief that I am not allowed to fail, ever, and that doing so will be catastrophic - something that has in fact been reinforced through things like conditional scholarships and lifelong anxiety that if I am not the best and if I am not intelligent then I am nothing, because it's the only thing people praised me for (til I left school and found out that among people in the real world, outside of academia, just being a decent human is pretty great actually).

So I'm on Khan academy and I walked it all the way back to college algebra so I can refresh what I remember, and I want to see how far I can go on my own time and how confident I am that I could in fact go into a science (I'm thinking meteorology or geology) and handle the math that comes with that. It's all just formulas. If there is one thing I'm good at, it's memorization. And I did not fully appreciate in school how often math comes with its own proofing system. The Adhd tells me I don't need to check my work - it has always been an issue. But the fact that I can is huge, actually.

Formulas are actually how I look at the world. Essays were easy because each type followed a formula. All you had to do was plug in examples to prove your conclusions. Even fanfiction tropes are, almost by definition, formulaic. The problem is that this thinking won't get you very far interpersonally/outside of math. But like... If there's a way this thinking COULD get me far, then why not? Why not at least try?

I think senior me would be glad to hear we're giving it a go again in a world and a headspace where we get to set our own pace and learn for fun, with the prospect of going back to school and taking whatever time we need. Failure is okay, actually. Taking longer to achieve a degree, making school fit around your life instead of the other way around is just fine. The time will pass anyway.