If academic disciplines can induce Stockholm Syndrome, I think I’ve caught it. Or rather, I’ve been completely and utterly brainwashed by my major. The version of me who barely passed middle school math, failed the A-Level P4 exam on the first try, and was terrified just looking at math, probably never saw this coming.
Over two years ago, after failing countless multivariable calculus exams, I seriously considered going to a college in Canada to study music, and then transferring to Berklee College in Boston via their bridge program. I consulted friends and teachers, and prepared myself for an honest conversation with my family. Ultimately, my dad shut it down with some harsh words. I figured, since I was stubbornly refusing to accept defeat until hitting rock bottom, I might as well go all out and fail a few more courses to make myself—and him—completely despair. Who told me not to make the most important choice of my life? And that brings us to today.
Are undergraduate math and statistics purely theoretical tools for training the mind, completely useless in practice? If anyone asked me before, I would just nod along, “Uh-huh.” Why was I studying this pile of junk discovered in the last century, or even the century before that? But later, after learning convex optimization, partial differential equations (especially the Fourier transform), and ICA, everything pointed toward digital audio signal processing. I don’t even know how to describe this feeling anymore. But if I hadn’t studied the “junk” I once despised, I’d probably faint at the sight of those formulas now. If I had to name my biggest regret right now, it would probably be learning linear algebra like a complete piece of crap, so much so that even looking at a simplified matrix, I have to stare at it forever trying to figure out what’s in those grids.
Two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could stick it out. I thought I’d either transfer schools, change majors, or pack up and go back home. From beginning to end, I never felt even a sliver of conscious willingness to spontaneously fall in love with math or statistics. But to ask me to leave them now—I really can’t do it.
Maybe I’m just a born tsundere (proud and stubborn). For the rest of my life, I’ll tell people, “I’ve never been happy studying math,” and I won’t say a single nice thing to the face of the math I’ve cursed tens of thousands of times behind its back. But to be honest, there have been many moments—big discoveries or small steps forward—that have inexplicably brought tears to my eyes. Today, too, for certain reasons, seeing everything connect made me tear up again.
Do knowledge and disciplines change a person? In a way, no. I’m exactly the same as I was ten or fifteen years ago: emotionally unstable, having only fleeting enthusiasm for things, speaking without thinking, and offending all sorts of people along the way. To me, the idea that math students naturally possess “mathematical thinking” is complete bullshit. But after being forced for four years to do something my subjective consciousness constantly resisted—something I thought I was just muddling through, hoping to finish and escape as soon as possible—I suddenly look back and feel like… I haven’t taken the wrong path. It’s truly a bit magical. Especially since I started getting A’s in my junior and senior years—and quite a few of them—whereas before, even a B was a luxury.
The fact that I was gaslit (PUAed) by the university is undeniable. Any school with an ounce of humanity wouldn’t have depressed a naturally optimistic person like me. But who knows? If I hadn’t encountered this godforsaken school, if I hadn’t been backed into a corner, would I have ended up with a pretty GPA but without having learned what I needed to learn, still clueless about what I should or wanted to do? I also have to thank Canada for treating me decently.
In the past, saying “I have no regrets” was just me stubbornly saving face. If you gave me the choice again, I would never choose this path. So, when I can calmly and honestly say this time, “I have no regrets, and I’m genuinely happy to have made it here,” my Stockholm Syndrome is definitely a confirmed diagnosis.
Also, I don’t think my dad ever expected this day, and I’m certainly not going to tell him, hehe.
The above is a status update I posted. I can chat more about it here on my personal website. But we’ll save that for when I have time.