Why the hell would anyone major in Math?

Since my Partial Differential Equations exam is coming up tomorrow, I figured now would be the best time to put aside my studying and write a blog entry. A lot of people ask me, "How can you major in Math? Why would you do something so painful? What are you going to do after college, become a Math teacher?" with an amazing amount incredulity mixed into each question. Usually, if that person is a student, I choose not to give some cliche response such as "because I like it, " or "because it's interesting." Instead, I usually ask, "Why did you choose your major?" Now I have friends in all majors, Engineering, Economics, History, Anthropology (bleh), Philosophy (bleh), Biology (bleh), Marine Biology (double bleh), Chemistry (good God why?!), Communications, Marketing, Finance, Business, Computer Science and everything in between. Some people tend to respond, "Because then I can go into this," or "Because it'll give me the best chance of: getting into law school/getting into med school/ getting into business/ getting into (insert some part of "the system"). Indeed those are good reasons, but are they any more important than doing what you enjoy? If they're one in the same, all the more power to you. Yet so many people choose a major simply because that's the career they want to have or that's the lifestyle they wish to lead.

My idea has always been this: your undergraduate degree does not mean shit. You can major in Art History and go into finance, you can major in Mech E and go into law school, you can major in Biology and end up going into business. I can major in Math and go into finance. In the end, all that really matters about your undergrad degree is getting good enough marks to get into whatever area you're going into, and doing what you like to do. You're going to be studying the same thing for 2.5+ years; you should really make sure you enjoy something if you're going to be doing it for that long. And the fact is, I enjoy doing math. On some primitive level, there's some sort of feral joy I get out of instant results from my hard work (a correct answer). On one hand, math is science, forming both the foundations and extensions of the modern scientific world. On the other hand, math is art, in both the formulation and construction of proofs and the eloquence of certain expressions. Math truly is the border between art and science, and requires not only skill in both, but also an appreciation for both. In this way, it always supports my idea of an optimal life being one balanced in all respects.

In case you're wondering what the strange object which could easily be mistaken for some sort of item intended for drug use pictured at the top of the post, it is a Klein Bottle, which is a closed, non-orientable manifold that exists only in 4 dimensions. Non-orientable means that if you were to stand on it, you would not be able to differentiate east from west, north from south, and closed means that you could continuously walk in all directions without ever hitting a barrier. And such is merely the beginning of geometric topology, which is only one of the many modern topics in mathematics.

Ridiculous, right? Pointless? Maybe. Interesting beyond all imagination? You bet! But much like a lot of other things in life, I don't value things based on what other people say their value is. I'd be very willing to bet that probably 9/10 people that read this post (if 10 people read it that is) are probably thinking, "wow, you study some pretty useless stuff." In a way, I would agree with you, but just because something is not useful does mean it is not worth doing. But, that's another topic for another time.

To close, I leave you with this awesome song. For those who are friends with me on Facebook, you may have seen this already. It's an a capella song about math by The Klein Four from Northwestern University. (Note: most of you probably won't get why everyone is laughing, but it's mostly homonym-ic... yea, I just made that word up)