The story I tell of how I ended up studying mathematics is one that my father would have admired: completely true but more than slightly irrelevant. When people find out what I do, they often ask “what’s a nice girl like you doing that?”, though perhaps not in so many words. Other remarks usually include all the possible variations on “wow, you must be really smart,” and “I was never any good at math,” an admission so socially acceptable as to be almost a badge of pride. So, I’ve learned to answer breezily, “well, after I spent a couple years at college taking fun courses, they said I had to pick a major to graduate, and a math degree required fewer credits than anything else.”
The true parts of that explanation are that Math did require fewer credits and also that I did go to college for a year during which I signed up for a wide variety of subjects, including Arabic, a course on Don Quixote, philosophy and whatever else attracted my attention in the catalog. I had picked going to school in Boston because, on a family trip during the early 1970’s I had been completely enthralled with the hippy student life happening on the streets of Kenmore Square.
But, after that exciting but rather unfocused year, I dropped out. Partly, I was undone by the rigors of writing papers. I could write. I just couldn’t figure out what to say! Or how to get myself started. Eventually, I did write the required papers, though probably not one was less than two weeks late. One time, I went to see a professor to tell him I had not written the current paper. He said nothing, lit a cigarette, leaned against the hallway wall, looked deeply thoughtful, and eventually slid down the wall until he reached a squatting position, taking deep drags of his unfiltered camel all the while. Finally he looked at me and said, “Well, the purpose of a paper is to come to an end.” Yes, he was a philosopher. And, surprisingly, this observation turned out to be helpful.
I went back home and took up a relaxing career doing temporary typing. As a Right Girl (later to become a more politically correct Right Temporary), I made the rounds of Chicago’s downtown businesses for a year. I earned some money and spent the following summer tooling around Europe’s hostels with a boyfriend. Then I went back to school. I thought I might study nursing since that was practical and didn’t require writing insightful papers, but the abbreviated science courses irritated me. I would have been a terrible nurse, anyway, as I have little patience with the sick. So I went back to studying the catalog and noticed I could graduate in two years if I studied math and went to summer school.
But, you wanted the real truth about why I studied math? OK, I confess. I love math in all its abstract purity. No, you don’t necessarily know how to get from here to there or whether something you are trying out will work or exactly how the pieces fit together. You may never figure it out. But. When you do prove something or solve something, you can know with absolute certainty that you are right.
The truth is that I’m not overly good at calculating.* My mother enjoyed this inability. She had been trained in mental arithmetic at school and could figure quickly, like how much material would be needed at this width and how much it would cost versus using the other material at a different width for a different price per yard. My mind just turned off and said, “where’s a pencil and paper?” in the same way that my students say, “ugh, where’s a calculator?” My mother would chuckle and say, “hmpf, my daughter with the doctorate in mathematics!”
*even to tell jokes; I see that I got the printing wrong in the picture. It should have read "there are three kinds..."
