The girls around me don’t talk to me much, but sometimes they try to impress me by telling of the same high school experience – banal topics like what their experience on drugs were, for example. I have a quality about me that can bring out more insightful experiences with people than they would otherwise share with me. I was at Trader Joe’s asking a salesperson where the fruit and veggie cleaner was when she started talking about her mother’s traditional apple cider vinegar.

I like to think of myself as a chameleon, weaving myself in and out of the different fabrics of people’s existence. Casual conversation is an aspect that would have made high school more interesting, but I don’t doubt I will have a lack of it here. I can also use my love of people to create study groups which weren’t possible in high school. In study groups, we will explore the variation of human thought on a single idea.

I do not want to be a mathematician who gets paid to sit at a desk. If I have to, I will talk to the next generation of students. It is mean to copy people’s work, but just as artists borrow techniques that are thousands of years old, so will I borrow from other people to find the most efficient solution to any math problem. For now, I apply myself to the humdrum routine I’ve almost gotten used to as a two-month-old adult. Once the boring bit is over, as in the solo trips to the library poring over unfingered textbooks, I want to be able to point to someone I know and say, “See, we studied this in class!” and hold up a pinecone (to demonstrate the Fibonacci sequence or some other sequence I haven’t learned yet).