Haha Of Course, How Silly Of Me

the human experience is so crazy. at any time i want, for free, i can comprehend the beauty and the horror of my own fragile existence, the cosmic insigificance and personal significance of my experiences, the impossibly vast yet laughably tiny boundaries of my own consciousness, and feel sick to my stomach with anticipation for everything i have yet to understand and grief for everything i have yet to lose.

mathematicians, constantly: god I’m so tired of people telling me how much they hate math whenever i mention what im into

me: yeah it’s fucked up. i do probability theory, what about you

them: oh man I hate probability theory

I can relate to your undergrad experience! And I think it might be a good sign looking forward, because you've developed insights and ways of thinking and motivation to go beyond undergrad and seek out new spaces where you can do your own work. That's by no means common, I know many fellow undergrads who are a) as mystified when they retake a class as they were the first time round, and b) feel accomplished enough to have passed eg Introductory Analysis and have no drive to look onward. You seem to know very much what you're good at, what interests you and which areas you'd like to grow in. I'd argue that undergrad studies, which give you an introduction and overview of the field and teach basic reasoning skills while not expecting any really original problem solving aren't exactly made for people like you. Talking to your professors or Masters or even PhD students is a really good idea!

thank you for your input, it brings a huge relief!

I already talked to two of my professors and they said that there is nothing to worry about. my advisor said that in his opinion learning new concepts while working on some problem is the right way to learn and from his experience this is way more rewarding than learning for school or even "just to learn". he also said that if I'm interested in working more on open stuff then he will let me know when he finds some questions I could ponder. the other professor said that it's a good thing, because from his experience a lot of people tend to get discouraged when there is no way of knowing how long solving the problem will take or how much new theory is needed, and I seem to be the other way around, so the work I'll be doing in the future probably won't scare me as much

I talked to some of my friends who are about to finish undergrad like me, and there are people who feel the same way as I do. coincidentally, those are the people who had the same situation as mine, that is, they were lucky enough to find an advisor who gave them an open question to work on. other people I talked to seem to be fairly content with studying for the classes and completing homework assignments, and they didn't get to work on something open yet, so maybe it has something to do with getting the taste of the good stuff haha

I can see now that the future looks good and I'm motivated to go exploring. I am aware that I have so much more to learn, but having got the reassurance that I'm probably doing it right, it doesn't sound as scary anymore

Hello, dear! 🌻

I saw your post wanting book recommendations. I'm sorry for your previous struggles, but I hope this list may help you find something you love!

-"The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yōko Ogawa (The professor is a mathematician!)

-if you like Vonnegut, you may like Haruki Murakami, specifically his older titles like "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Norwegian Wood" (I feel these books do a good job of expanding on people's motivations and moods.)

-"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery (Again, excellent at conveying emotions.)

-"Hunting and Gathering" by Anna Gavalda (This one is technically a romance - a genre which I personally would normally HATE - but it portrays such realistic characters, their struggles and their natural dialogue during fights that it actually felt more like I was reading about a collection of lives that I had the pleasure of spying on from above. I really love this book!)

-for WWI and WWII-themed titles, I'd recommend the Battlefield comics by Garth Ennis (He's SO good at writing believable characters and realistic dialogues.)

-if you don't mind high fantasy, any of the books in Terry Praychett's Discworld series about the wizards might be up your alley (You can read them independently without issue, or start from the beginning of any of the wizard titles. You can find a reading guide online! The wizards of his world are very regimented about how magic works - somewhat like mathematicians - and it's very funny.)

-the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" series by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (I'd skip the 4th one - the main character/POV changed and I wasn't as impressed with the writing in that one - but the first 3 books are an absolute dream to read. The characters are so charming, lovable or completely horrifying, it feels like a wonderful foreign mystery series that takes place in 1940s Spain. It was really interesting to try to keep track of such a unique mystery amidst the second world war.)

I hope those help! Please enjoy your reading journey. ♡

hi, and thank you so much for the recommendations! I appreciate it a lot, those books sound really good

Lagrange Markipliers or something idk I forgot all my multivariable calc.

http://proof.ucalgaryblogs.ca/

This is the best resource for studying math that I've found in a while! It's 300+ pages of flawed/incorrect proofs on topics including logic, analysis, and linear algebra. Each flawed proof is followed by a classification of its errors, and a corrected version.

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

2-3 VIII 2021

it's 4am currently, i woke up after a 5hour nap and i don't plan to sleep anymore, time for topo

sleep: weird but going in the right direction i guess

concentration: fine

phone time: good

i am currently dragging myself through some of the most important theorems in multivar calculus i believe. inverse function theorem, implicit function theorem, diffeomorphisms and stuff. the proofs are quite simple but very long hence exhausting, my least fav kind of proofs. right now i'm doing topo

tomorrow (or rather today) i'm planning to do more topo and possibly finish my notes from that calculus chapter

31 VII 2022

finally posting after the exams are over, it was the longest session I have ever experienced, a month of exams. I passed everything and it was a good semester, actually my grades are better than ever before, which comes off as a surprise, I can't believe that it's anything other than luck

now what am I going to do for the holiday huh

next semester I am going to take three courses: analytic functions, commutative algebra and a mix-course of category theory, sheaf theory and homological algebra. then I plan to take algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, number theory and some more abstract algebra, along with writing a bachelor's thesis. this is probably going to be the hardest year so far, I don't know how I am going to survive this, I'm so scared

I was asked to give some lectures on geometry during a math summer camp for people who want to participate in the math olympiad. it's a great opportunity for me to practice giving lectures, as that's what I plan my job to be. moreover, it is my dream to be so good at math that I could prep people for the olympiad, hence that's a fraction of that dream coming true

the problem is I don't know geometry lol last time I did any was like four years ago in high school

thus I play with triangles everyday

other than that I must prepare a talk for a conference, I chose to do one on the knot theory, Seifert surfaces specifically. I started reading about it some time ago and it seems super cool

untangling knots is a perfect thing to do for fun

my plan for the holiday outside of these side-quests is to learn as much as possible for the courses that I'll be taking. the problem with them (besides analytic functions) is that they will be quite technical, detailed and dry, as they are supposed to give the tools necessary to study algebraic topology and geometry. that does sound dreadfully boring, no? that's what scares me, because when I am not interested in what I'm trying to learn everything becomes twice as hard. I asked here and there for advice and people told me to read about algebraic geometry in tandem with commutative algebra, since many constructions have beautiful interpretations and motivations there. sounds like exactly what I need

my bachelor's thesis will be on algebraic or differential topology probably, but I don't know exactly what I want to write about. I was thinking about vector fields on manifolds or de rham cohomology, but the thing with the proseminar on geometric topology (mine) is that it's been planned to give the introduction to the currently researched topics and offer opportunities to work with fresh conjectures and theorems. at least that's how it was described. allegedly geometric topology has this property that undergrads can contribute to the development of new theory, which is very surprising to me ngl, I would guess that this is highly unlikely with any kind of math nowadays and yet here we are

in conclusion, I'm excited but scared

you really can't

wha?

please explain what this message means or else the curiosioty will kill me