(06-23-2023) Linear Alge-bruh.
When I was a jit I was pretty awful at math. It
was always my weakest subject and I grew up really
believing, partly because I was told by those around
me, that I was not a 'math person'. I
did pretty okay in school otherwise, I even excelled
in a couple subjects, but when it came to math I could
never hit the mark.
I developed as a result a strange obsession with the
subject. It became the one thing I wholly felt myself
incapable of. An alien technology, beyond my brain's
potential to comprehend.
Fast forward to my senior year of high school. I did a
full-time dual enrollment program at a local college.
There I took calculus I, II and III and I excelled at it.
Calculus seemed larger and more challenging and it captured me
in a way that the classes I took in high school hadn't. It
was an opportunity to prove that math was not beyond
me and I embraced that challenge. I spent many, many
hours studying for those courses. As a result, I did well.
It was a happy time for me.
Today I have a B.S. in computer science and consequentially
I have had to take many more math courses in between then and now.
Hell, I think I was only two courses away from a minor.
But I still fight with nagging voices in my head, echoing what
I was told all those years back. In all this time I've
never been able to shake a feeling of inadequacy when confronted
with anything I can relate to math. And it's a shame,
a damn shame.
Mathematics is a beautiful field. I've stolen glimpses of that
beauty over the years, in the courses I took in college and in
my own attempts at exploring the subject. To think that some
two-bit comments I internalized fifteen years ago stunted my
potential to enjoy and understand the mother of all sciences
is a kick in the gut.
I'll continue to fight with those voices until I'm able to let
go of my insecurities. If you're in a similar boat, I think you
should to. There is a world of hidden intellectual pleasure out
there waiting for you. Give 'em hell.