I go to school for mathematics, but second year has taught me about so much more. Here are the things that I learned, inside and outside of the lecture halls.
o1. People at university like meetings. They like holding meetings, talking about holding meetings, and talking during the meetings that they hold.
o2. Oh, and emails. People at university love emails.
o3. Sometimes your professors see the potential in you that you can't see in yourself, and for that I am grateful. I owe a world of thanks to the math professor who told me that my dreams are worth pursuing when I had convinced myself otherwise.
o4. Some of the classmates that I sit beside today are going to be great tomorrow. They are going to be mathematicians and doctors and teachers and physicists and leaders, and they are going to be amazing.
o5. Sometimes the most useful thing someone can do is not to give you any advice at all. Own your decisions, the resulting consequences and the gifts.
o6. It makes a world of difference if you do the readings and problem sets before class as opposed to after class.
o7. "If you think about it", you can come to any conclusion in the world. (This one's for you, Calculus 2502.)
o8. A sharp pencil makes all the difference.
o9. You don't have to be a genius to do math.
1o. If the problems that you're doing don't make you want to bang your head on the desk and scream and quit and cry, then you're not working on hard enough problems.
11. The people get stranger as you progress deeper into academia.
12. It's easy to forget about your own ability when you go to an incredible university and are constantly surrounded by so much talent, but never forget why you are here in the first place.
13. Sometimes you have to say no to people. That's okay.
14. University is just a big game as to who can be the most overcaffeinated, underslept, stressed and still make it on top.
15. Being ahead of the game is the best feeling in the entire world.
16. Your health really does come first. I learned this the really, really hard way. Don't do that.
17. Well-lit study space is the ultimate commodity.
18. Waking up fifteen minutes early in the morning can change your entire day for the better.
19. Never underestimate the incredible power of the perfect little skirt.
2o. Sweatpants are still not okay.
21. Everyone always needs a stapler, and no one ever has one.
22. It's about the experience. You're missing out if you don't have a sleepless night once in a while.
23. Context is everything.
24. You never see the whole story. The people who appear to be the most put-together are often those who are the most stressed out.
25. You don't always have to talk. Sometimes silence speaks louder.
26. The hardest decision is to take the high road, but it is one that you will never regret.
27. Wikipedia is an incredible math resource when you have the knowledge to comprehend what it says. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of nonsensical strung-together symbols and accurate yet ridiculously convoluted proofs.
28. If there exists a textbook, there exist solutions somewhere.
29. Cute cats make every PowerPoint presentation instantly better, no matter what the topic!
30. Everything in the entire world can be reduced to systems of linear equations if you try hard enough.
31. Being kind to perfect strangers will take you far in life.
32. You can only eat so much pizza before you have to start eating real food.
33. Stop substituting infinity into equations; nothing good ever comes out of it.
34. Punctuality is impressive, but it shouldn't have to be. We live in a culture that makes it okay to be late as long as you let someone know, but really, you still wasted fifteen minutes of someone else's life.
35. No one ever thinks "Oh, I wish I'd spent more time on Facebook." Ever.
36. The most important trait for success in math is not mental arithmetic, hard work or even talent; it's creativity (and sometimes a little bit of luck).
37. It isn't until you get deeper into school that you realize how vast the world is, how limited the scope of human knowledge is, and just how much you still have to learn. But the moment that you make that realization is quite enlightening.
38. You are more certain of your path at fifteen (fueled by blind confidence) than you are at twenty (fueled by the revelation of your own ignorance).
39. Some professors will teach you about math. Some will teach you about so much more.
4o. When in doubt, proof by induction. Also, thanks to one Discrete Structures professor, I will never again write, "Let P(n) be true."
41. The really cool thing about math is how you can take two seemingly unrelated concepts and come up with a beautiful relationship between them.
42. Real life would be simpler if we worked exclusively over the field of complex numbers. (Because then your characteristic polynomial would always split!)
43. Everyone here has something to teach you. Whether or not they're fun to talk to
—well, that's a different story.
44. It is still only, ever, all about the chase.
45. It turns out that you can't just change the question to suit your needs, you actually have to answer the question.
46. Never underestimate the power of a well-placed "if and only if" statement.
47. There are all sorts of infinities (thanks, Real Analysis), but finiteness is just as essential, for humanity is finite.
48. Sometimes it's simply figuring out the right questions to ask. Everything else will fall into place.
