Tonight, I am thinking about....
Math.
Strange subject, I know. Especially for me, since I hated all iterations of it I've ever had to study.
The closest thing to a branch of math I LIKED, though, was algebra. It was the first I learned; my dad taught it to me by accident when I was ten, when I asked him to help me with my homework and he decided it was the best way to solve a long division word problem. Engineers, I tell you.
I liked algebra because it was kind of like unpeeling an orange. You start off with this smooth, mysterious thing, which you know has something nice inside that you can't see. And the first few times you try and dig your thumbnail into it, nothing happens. You can make yourself look like a real retard if you try to peel an orange in fromt of people; sitting there frustrated and outwitted by a piece of fruit. But once you get that first chunk of peel off, you're in; it's only a matter of stripping back systematically (in one long strip if you're especially stylish) until you have even, lovely sections waiting for you to eat.
Algebra's like that because, for me at least, the first layer of equation is nearly impossible. More often than not I'd use up half the class time on two problems, just transferring variables from one side of the equation to the other in the hope of finding something that worked. I used to have twenty lines of work for like a two-variable equation. But once you get past that first step, it's clockwork. It all snaps into place, and it's very satisfying, if not exactly fun. When I took logic calculus in college (basically algebra with no numbers) it was the same thing; a statement of pure, meaningless word salad would resolve into a neat little syllogism or tautology, but only after I floundered around like an idiot doing stupid things until I could SEE the path out of the problem.
On paper, it's a few moments of chagrin, when you finally do spot that one glaring equivalence that makes everything make sense and go, "doh, how could I have possible missed that." (At least, it was for me but then I hate, hate, HATE not knowing something.) How much worse to experience that same moment of 'doh' when it's not an equation but six months of your life.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. There's really no comparison between math and being swindled.
Is there a comparison between the feelings of satisfaction, though? Yes, simply because it's nice to see something that was previously a mess, a confusing, horrible mess, become a series of clearly connected variables that lead to an inevitable conclusion.
Even if that conclusion involves hatred where before there was only guilt, nostalgia, and remorse.
I will never forgive you.
Strange subject, I know. Especially for me, since I hated all iterations of it I've ever had to study.
The closest thing to a branch of math I LIKED, though, was algebra. It was the first I learned; my dad taught it to me by accident when I was ten, when I asked him to help me with my homework and he decided it was the best way to solve a long division word problem. Engineers, I tell you.
I liked algebra because it was kind of like unpeeling an orange. You start off with this smooth, mysterious thing, which you know has something nice inside that you can't see. And the first few times you try and dig your thumbnail into it, nothing happens. You can make yourself look like a real retard if you try to peel an orange in fromt of people; sitting there frustrated and outwitted by a piece of fruit. But once you get that first chunk of peel off, you're in; it's only a matter of stripping back systematically (in one long strip if you're especially stylish) until you have even, lovely sections waiting for you to eat.
Algebra's like that because, for me at least, the first layer of equation is nearly impossible. More often than not I'd use up half the class time on two problems, just transferring variables from one side of the equation to the other in the hope of finding something that worked. I used to have twenty lines of work for like a two-variable equation. But once you get past that first step, it's clockwork. It all snaps into place, and it's very satisfying, if not exactly fun. When I took logic calculus in college (basically algebra with no numbers) it was the same thing; a statement of pure, meaningless word salad would resolve into a neat little syllogism or tautology, but only after I floundered around like an idiot doing stupid things until I could SEE the path out of the problem.
On paper, it's a few moments of chagrin, when you finally do spot that one glaring equivalence that makes everything make sense and go, "doh, how could I have possible missed that." (At least, it was for me but then I hate, hate, HATE not knowing something.) How much worse to experience that same moment of 'doh' when it's not an equation but six months of your life.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. There's really no comparison between math and being swindled.
Is there a comparison between the feelings of satisfaction, though? Yes, simply because it's nice to see something that was previously a mess, a confusing, horrible mess, become a series of clearly connected variables that lead to an inevitable conclusion.
Even if that conclusion involves hatred where before there was only guilt, nostalgia, and remorse.
I will never forgive you.