I’ve been seriously thinking about my decision to major in math. It’s not like math is something I was ever really passionate about. Math is math, I do it because careers that make you do math pay you a lot of money. Sometimes when I think about it for a second too long it feels like I’ve betrayed myself, like I should have gone into creative writing, journalism, philosophy or something. But those paths don’t make money, or as much money. They don’t pay you back for all of the trouble you went through to attend college and take loans out and graduate. I guess for some, going to college isn’t any trouble at all. Some enjoy their college experience, it’s a time for them to smoke weed and hang out with their friends and get drunk on Saturdays before they have to get a job. It’s not a ritual of constantly feeling like an idiot and bashing your head against the wall every time you encounter a problem you don’t immediately know how to solve, which is every problem for me at least. I like technical things too, I run linux like those nerds on the internet do, I tinker with computers, I got claude to build me an app, I jailbroke my kindle. I installed linux on my chromebook. I’m clearly a smart fella, I belong in STEM, what’s math anyway? I can do that, bro I can do computers… It’s become a ritual of constantly feeling inadequate. Constantly feeling like the other shoe is about to drop. I keep telling myself to stop being a baby. Yeah it’s hard that’s the point, engineers that can’t pass basic Calculus shouldn’t be building bridges. Yeah, not everyone should be a mathematician, then mathematics wouldn’t advance anymore, and we wouldn’t get cool shit like AI building apps for you. I guess there’s just classes that don’t feel difficult at all, and I see people fully committing themselves to those things, it makes me wonder if maybe I’m giving up something I’m naturally good at for something that’ll make me more money, if those people are either dumb or the top percentile of people who’ll make careers out of those things, or both. Some people claim to not care about the money, but that’s bullshit. You’ll care about money at some point, even if that point is not now. At some point I just have to accept that I have to do hard things, accept that I’m not always going to be rewarded for them immediately, accept that I may not like doing them - I might even hate doing them, but also accept that they’ll make me a better person. For as much as I hate this shit (math), it has made me better, more productive, smarter, a better learner, a better everything. It sucks, but it works. That’s what’s kept me going I guess. I was driven purely by motivation (and by the content not being that hard) when I was taking Calculus 1 and 2. I remember feeling sharper and more attentive after going through all of that. And I was. I felt like I had more to contribute to conversations afterwards which was weird because I had not practiced my communication skills whatsoever. I felt like I somehow got better at a lot of things like writing and understanding difficult concepts even if they weren’t mathematical in nature. It was just proof, math makes you better. It’s kept me going even if I hate it sometimes.
Anyway, I made an app. It’s called Echo Lingua, it’s basically a clone of Pimsleur but it’s free, it’s for me only, and it fits my learning style a little bit better than half-assedly listening to an audio. I had a surprisingly fun time using this app, it was really cool. I’ll push it ASAP after I get some quirks figured out.
I guess I don’t really have to give anything up. That’s been an idea I’ve been exploring lately, the fact that you can do it all. YES you CAN be the most handsome AND the most jacked AND the smartest AND the best student AND have a lot of money AND be social and have a lot of friends AND know a lot of languages AND be good at math. YOU. CAN. DO. IT. ALL. James Bond type-shit. This idea has led me to explore neuroplasticity and nootropics in depth during this semester. It just seems like a basic fact that if you want to grow, your brain needs to grow as well, a.k.a more connections, synapses firing on all cylinders, all units engaged. It makes sense. And in my experience, it’s absolutely true. I’m not going to go in-depth in this post (I’ll probably have more on these sorts of topics) but whenever I’ve experimented with compounds that seriously boost neuroplasticity, not just Lion’s Mane - I’m talking real experimental type stuff you can’t buy at your local Sprouts, my productivity skyrockets. More than anything, it truly feels like its given me the capacity to be more myself. More opinionated, better at curating what suits me and what doesn’t. Clickbaiting on YouTube is cringe - doesn’t suit me. Engagement farming and polluting timelines with worthless slop meant to steal people’s attention without giving them anything substantive or worth thinking about - slop, not for me. One bit that’s always tripped me up is the fact that there’s people with their names and faces out on the internet being reckless, saying things carelessly. Not polished whatsoever. And this isn’t to say that I’m so sophisticated or that I have the cleanest online persona, but I’m definitely conscientious. In fact, that’s kind of what this website lets me do, be conscientious, allow a little messiness but it’s ok because it’s all (mostly) done manually instead of through a service like WordPress or Squarespace. It also lets me mess around with settings and other cool things that can make this my own, not an Instagram profile or an X profile where customization is limited. It can grow with me over time.
-D