#math majors

[heisen-heimer]

Online college is so stressful!!!! I will cryyyyyy

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day Saint Hubert

656-658 Feast day: November 3 Patronage: hunters, mathematicians, opticians, metalworkers

Saint Hubert or Hubertus was passionately devoted to hunting. While chasing a stag on a Good Friday morning, he received a vision of a crucifix between the animal’s antlers. A voice warned him,“Hubert, unless you turn to the Lord, and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down to hell.” It was a conversion experience for Hubert. After his wife died he became a priest and later a bishop working passionately for Our Lord.

{website}

[courtesanofdeath]

my brain every time I hear the word “density”:

[jungleuniversity]

when the proof is trivial:

[vivo-morior-iterum-vivo]

Today one of my math teachers said,

"Math majors write the best angst because that's all math is."

And suddenly I had to deal with the fact that I and the other 32 math majors in the class were all feeling very called out, while realizing that we all sit around writing when we should be doing math...

Who knew! Apparently him somehow?

He then picked up his mug labeled, "student tears" and said, "You're welcome."

[elsewhereuniversity]

The students call the professor Elisa. Her last name must be somewhere in record, but her students know her more by her smile and the cookies she bakes on Fridays than her position, anyway.

She teaches mathematics, and a few of the more advanced computer science classes, and one day her Calculus 3 class feels strange. She stops, blinks, calmly, then decides to cover something new today, something not found in other Calculus classes. One by one each “student” leaves, paltry excuses from hissing mouths when They realize where they are and what they are dealing with, until only a solitary student is left groaning in his chair. She’s made enemies today. She doesn’t care - they made one the moment they decided to Take her class. Mathematicians won’t stand for an unequal substitution.

She finishes the class, and smiles warmly at the sole original student, who was not repulsed at all, just lost three chapters ago. She grabs a chalkboard and exactly three whole pieces of chalk, checks the metal filings and salt in her pockets, takes along a crumbling circuit board just in case. Then she briskly walks straight into the forest.

It doesn’t take long to find them; fateful meetings are like that. Her students are in a circle-shaped clearing (she could draw a better one with her eyes closed) ringed with mushrooms. They stare into space; some dance, but most are mumbling a few algorithms, the little troopers. Their captors are - arguing? Do They argue? - and she approaches and asks why they have her students.

They tell her, we have made a deal. It was fair. An exchange. A substitution, if you will. They mock her and her profession! Elisa simply turns her head back and laughs.

She knows what a deal with Them means, and there are Laws, but then there are laws. Laws founded in very existence, immutable, untrickable, unbendable. She begins drawing with her chalkboard, a little simple geometry she learned (earned) after a few years at EU, for some witchcraft is only circles and lines, rules and instructions. She was bound to cross it sooner or later at a place like Elsewhere.

They soon beg her to make a new deal, anything to cease the proofs searing their skin. No, she says. Let me show you something else.

She draws two short, parallel lines. Equality, she hisses. Let’s see how it works. Her classroom smile is missing at this lesson. She does a little arithmetic, then jumps to a quick proof of a power series for the sine function, then jumps further, erased chalk clouding the air. She couldn’t even show this last proof to her grad students, but They follow it in horror just fine. Behind Them, her students are already breaking free. They had lost something, of course, they made a Deal, but now only something equal to what they gained - and where the loss was multiplied their gain must now be, too. True balance enforced and applied, a spell she’s used perhaps more than any other. It was always her favorite symbol.

Elisa teaches one additional class, the kind of class it is only safe to teach in broad daylight. Witches at Elsewhere are a touchy subject, so they’re less carefully guarded – if they’re willing to invite old powers, then they assume the risks involved. The math department witches know what they’re doing, but they also know that Elisa will guard her children with shields of silicon and chalk. Plus, her gingerbread alone is worth the risk.

x

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Math degree story please

By popular demand, I present you with the unfortunate story of how I went to college and accidentally got a math degree.

I was tricked

Engineering. Fucking mechanical engineering. That’s what I blame it on. Fucking engineering. Fuck. I was thinking about majoring in it. i could build cool mechanical shit and blow up things but on purpose. sounds good right? So freshman year, while everyone else is taking freshman art & english & intro classes, I start doing engineering prereq classes. Most of which are math. So. much. Fucking math. 

Skip ahead 2 years and I’ve switched majors to computer science. Guess what also requires math prereqs?

Fucking computer science

No problem right? I wasted two years on math courses, Hundreds of hours in the math building, which smells like the 80s and mold. I’ve probably already taken the ones I need.

Nope. Fucking computer science. what the fuck.

More math. So much fucking math. I had nightmares where functions are chasing me across graphs. That sounds like I’m exaggerating. no. I have actually more than once fallen asleep in the library and had study-induced nightmares. also I was on a lot of cold meds.

Fast forward to my last semester. I’ve already taken all the fucking math prereqs, no more math for me. This is it. I’m finally done.

And thats when I find out: i’ve taken so many fucking math courses that i’ve literally completed the major. I have literally accidentally gotten a second degree in math.

But. One final Fuck You from mathematics. only certain courses can count towards more than one major. i’ve already using one math course to count towards computer science. I’m one course short.

And now I’m fucking angry. And tired. So tired. I stop fighting it. I drop my shoulders, bend my weary head. I give in to the inevitable. i blubber a little. Say goodbye to the semester i thought i was gonna mostly skip & sleep in.  And I sign up for fucking math. 

[heisen-heimer]

Nobody :

Maths Boizᵗᵐ flirting : Math isnt hard baby, I am ;)