While Visions of Integrals Danced In My Head

Homework!

This afternoon I go in to take the fourth Calculus 1 test of the semester.  The first three went well.  I am bragging, but I do have an A average in the class so far.  This one isn't any different, really--but it is.  It is kind of like Christmas when I was a kid.  

I took a series of black and white photos like these to overlay when I was in a Photography I class.  We learned how to develop our own film and printed our own photos from the negatives.  When I tried to add photos to this entry, this came up as an option.  I don't now why it is continually running--but with these 8 or 9 photos it looks kind of cool.

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where colour TV was a big deal; mobil phones, Post-It notes, and velcro hadn't even been invented; computers were just a gleam in Steve Job's eye; I actually used a slide rule for math; Autism, depression, and indecision were were shameful things no one talked about; and AIDS hadn't been discovered yet. I was 11 years old--and didn't even know to wonder what life would be like when I was 55.    

I hated school.  Our family moved, on the average, every two years and so I was always the "new kid."  On my first day of class in one school, I sat in the "most popular" girl's chair by mistake. The other kids told me I'd better move or she would beat me up.  (I knew she wouldn't--because I moved before she arrived in class and she turned out to be a nice person, though she never knew who I was.)  In another school, when it was discovered that I liked a certain boy, he sat behind me and whispered mean things about my clothes and my shoes while the teacher presented the lesson.  

Kind of a geometric image.

I was luckier than most kids in my position, though, because I was smart, good in school, and the teachers would talk to me like a person.  I also lived in a dream world--floating above myself and looking down on the events of every day.  I was forced to be an actor at the mercy of the kids around me, but I was also safely ensconced in the audience--distant and safe in the balcony section.

Watching myself.

Through these years, Christmas was a shining moment--wonderful because there was no school, and exciting because even though I knew there was no Santa for real, he still existed for my younger brothers and sisters.   I loved being home--it was a safe place for both my body and my spirit.  At Christmas, though, the uncertainty of Christmas morning put me on edge.  I knew that no matter what I got, I would be disappointed.  Nothing real could match the fantasy of my undefinable hopes.        

Essentially, I didn't know what I wanted and so no matter what I received, it could never be right.  

The agony of that hazy expectation is much like what I am feeling this morning.

More homework!

I know that I will make mistakes on the test, but I don't know what they will be.  I prepare and practice, but I am not sure what I should spend my last few hours reviewing.  

It is an amazing mix of dread, excitement and wonder that I could be learning a way of thinking that lets me measure the area of shapes with curved surfaces and discover how fast an object is falling at any specific point in time.  I am not studying "math," but a way of describing the world around me by using symbols and relationships between numbers.  

After walking through the Ft Lauderdale Temple, training for Open House tour guide.
April 2014

It is like the moment when I discovered that I could "write" a circle with letters and numbers.  Studying math is like studying a new language that attempts to capture the vastness of space, and also the unseeable movement of electrons.  

It is magic--except it is real.