Skip to main content

Making Myself at Home, Maybe

Math is a humbling subject for me. I spend much of my time on the right side of the brain, where idealism and figurative language dance together along neural pathways. This, of course, leaves the gray matter on the left side of my mind-- where math and logic dwell-- looking something less than gray.

Perhaps it looks more charred, especially after tonight. I met an acquaintance from my clinical medical assistant class to study basic math skills. Having done fairly well in my last college math class, I had left the math world somewhat encouraged. Tonight, however, that little glass world was shattered wide and far. It's not that I didn't know how to add or divide fractions. I remembered that. It was that I made so many careless mistakes.

It wasn't all that frustrating, I suppose, because I felt I understood the concepts. I simply am not accustomed to the precision required by math, the lack of room for error. If the social sciences are a spacious suite with a kind old woman inviting me in for tea and cookies, math is the aged and creaky apartment room whose crotchety old landlord wants to kick me out.

Perhaps I won't be so quick to leave, however. I might make myself at home for awhile in that old man's space, snacking on fractions and warming myself by brightening formulaic fires. If not, I suppose I'll be scurrying back to that old familiar hearth where metaphors and similes kiss in flawed but fitted poetry. It's warmer there now, I know, but I think that with enough time, I could get used to this new place. I know my home right now is in the spacious suite of reading and language. Whether I choose to move more permanently into the maths and sciences is a matter that time will make clearer. What I can say with a measure of certainty, however, is that I will become increasingly transient in the next few months, roving like a traveler between two worlds. I can only guess whether those worlds will look anything like what I've imagined.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...