this isprobably gonna be messy because my keyboard sucks and i dont want to spend 40fucking minutes correcting allthe typos or slamming my spacebar to get it towork properly.
but.
i kind of hate myself at the moment even though imgoing to start living my ~dream life~(phd in pure maths in fucking austria lol) this summer. God, this tumblr account isthe exactplace where I wrote a millionfucking posts aboutbeing in love withaustria,leaving my heart in austria, wantingtodie in america etc like 8 years ago. I mean i still feel that way.but its more complicated now , i know more about math now, i have two different ideasfor my life, two conflicting paths i want to pursue, so its all fucking bittersweet.
I wanted to be a number theorist. God, I practically was a number theorist. I’m an author on a published analytic number theory paper in a professional journal, i spent two summers of my life doing number theory research, one of which was at one of the top REUs for number theory inthe country, Iworked with students from princeton and shit and wason thee same level as them , i taught them things,i wasnt certain i wanted to domy phd in number theory at that point but it was obviously my pet area ofmathematics. then this year during my masters program i started phd applications and scholarship applications and interviews. I went and talked to number theorists here in glasgow and in england as well to learn about their research and fell in fucking LOVE with langlands program. specifically the correspondence between galois representations and automorphic forms - before that I was really feeling class group distributions and using some rep. theory to study class group stuff but i found myself sitting in an office in sheffield getting a mini lecture on the langlands stuff and could not wipe the fucking smile off my face. I knew that was 100% what I wanted to do. but. The UK has no fucking funding in pure maths for non uk/eu people. I had somany fucking interviews with schools here and in most of them, the people interviewing me came into the interview wanting me and being super impresssed w my application. Everyone knows my summer research advisers, they see my transcript, the number of grad classes i’d taken, the opportunities i found for myself despite attending a small liberal arts school with no distinguished mathematics department. I was sooooo into Bristol. Bristol is fucking great for number theory. and they were into me too.They thought there was no way i WOULDN’T get funded - because there used to be this government funding scheme that was open to americans. But after the interview they learned that the scheme changed this year and isn’t considering americans anymore. So that took 3 of my possibilities off the table. The other schools had just no funding whatsoever for americans so whatever. I already had the offer for the austria program. but then I got an interview for the london school of geometry and number theory. I didn’t realize how prestigious it was when I applied, but fair enough, I’m honestly fully fucking qualified for it. But theywant fancy boys from cambridge and only had 3 spots available for international students (out oof 14 total). but I’m getting ahead of myself. So I interviewed. They knew abuot my deadline (for austria). The interview went fine, I Was awkward as fuck and stumbling over my answers but its fucking mathematics, i shouldn’t need to be charismatic lol. I was interviewing with one of peter scholze’s collaborators so of course i was terrified and awkward lol. They acknowledged my deadline for the austria program. They said they would give me an answer. They did not. I emailed a few days ahead of my deadline asking whether I Should take no answer as a rejection. No response. I emailed 5 different people a total of 8 times. No responses at all. so whatever I accepted Austria. I mayhave chosen it over LSGNT anyway because I do NOT want t live in london and because the austria program really wanted me specifically, they actually asked me to apply and went out of their way to accommodate me… Now its been over 2 months since all of that and LSGNT still never dignified me with a response. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how to feel about it, because that would have been my best shot at being a serious number theorist. It would have been mathematically the best opportunity(although def the worst in all other ways) but I’llnever know what happened withmy application after that interview. The problem with the austria program is that its not in number theory. I’ll be doing my phd in algebra (kind of combinatorial representation theory) I feel like I had to choose a path - number theory, a life of competitiveness and being around cutthroat people in a prestigious program, no real life outside of mathematics…. or doing a less prestigious program in a less intense area of math that will give my the opportunity to live in my dream city and pursue hobbies outside of math. Now that Im getting the latter I feel like I would have preferred the former. but that feeling may be misguided. I’m mostly hurt that the choice didn’t end up really being mine. Like one of the students I worked with over a summer is going to do number theory at princeton. thats #1place in the worldfor number theory. So clearly that could have been me. But also as a woman I feel likemy shit never gets taken seriously. And I wouldn’t have wanted to move back to america, I purposely didnt apply there, so why do i feel so jealous and bitter and envious? But sometimes I cry tears of joy that I am going to study math in austria and start climbing again and live my *almost* dream life.And I’m going to try to do number theory research on the side because im only expected to work 30 hrs/week for my program. So its good, right? People give me pep talks andmakeme realize its good. They tell me that I’m not an emotionless, cutthroat bitch who can truly dedicate her entire life to mathematics. I think they’re right but I still feel in my soul that maybe I couldhave, maybe I could have made it, I was soclose I could taste it, I wish I could havee at least given it a try
Life is funny because I went to austria and I've lived here for 4 years and i hate it with every fiber of my being and I'm so so so excited to finally get the fuck out of here next month and move BACK to my home state, back to the midwest, because I have grown up and realized that being around people you like is more important than some pretty buildings or even walkable cities (but walkable cities ARE damn good.)
The life update is that i did not finish my phd in algebra or in number theory. I did quit the algebra one after a year to do number theory in the same city but turns out the cutthroat boys' club is not as great as i romanticized it to be once I had gone through some major life traumas that shattered my naivety.... I could not stand any of that shit, I could not stand having to prove myself to a bunch of men every single day, and a million other things happened incl. developing debilitating chronic illness so I quit math entirely and decided to become a climber instead.
I don't know shit and I'm aimless in life because I still want to do math research but I dont want to dedicate my life to the bullshit in academia, I don't idealize every aspect of it anymore so i see that it's exploitative and shitty, thinking about re-applying to phd programs in the US but i am not certain whether I want that for myself anymore. Kind of want a job that I can just do casually and not have to dedicate my whole life and being to. None of this matters but I logged in to try to internet stalk someone i had forgotten about and then saw this post and it's kinda wild how things have developed in my life since i wrote it.
