My reasoning:
- 1) I realize, considering I can't go to office hours of professors due to them yelling at me (has happened twice) if they let me in OR outright denial of entry, I won't be getting good grades. On a few occasions, I've even had a grad student stand outside of my actual office hour visits, I assume to intimidate me. The same grad student. Three different visits, three different professors, and he just stood outside the door for all of them. The third time I said ”HI BRIAN” and he (literally) ran away. So he was trying to intimidate me, I think (as a side note, he also told me partial differential equations and probability were dual concepts when I asked him about PDEs & the study of them. As in, taking a probability class is the same as taking a PDE class. I believe this guy now has a Ph.D. America, that's your academic culture). Therefore, it's important for me to show on grad school applications that I have some proof that I've been able to digest the information I've learned, with the caveat that the information I learned was digested in an academic vacuum. Nothing I've written is incorrect mathematically (with some obvious exceptions that I do actively correct via errata for each individual work). I admit my style is loose, but then again I didn't receive anything resembling an education in either a home or school environment, and I certainly don't have an Ivy League approach to articulation of scientific ideas. Things like that can be corrected with proper guidance from a non-judgmental professor lacking a (gender neutral) Napoleon Complex.
2.) It keeps me going, academically. It's something I love and I'm not willing to discard it when I know that, while nothing I've done is perfect, the subject I'm writing on is an original, valid piece of mathematical work. As I'm to understand it, those are the exact requirements for a Ph.D. Thesis in all mathematical programmes. From the best to the worst. So, in that sense, I have a leg up if I ever (but likely never) get into a grad programme. It's called foresight and preparation. I don't really have much else to look forward to within the academic world, so I'm just going all in on that. And by putting papers up and putting my work out there, it's sort of like an SOS signal on a small island in the middle of the ocean. Maybe someone sees it and you get rescued. Maybe someone sees it and ignores it and you die. Maybe nobody sees it and you die. But sending the signal out keeps hope alive, however slight.
- 3) It keeps me going on an emotional and psychological level. There's not a whole lot for me to look forward to outside of academia. If/when I graduate, I have to move from here and I don't have friends anywhere or relatives anywhere. I don't have references for jobs or apartments. I would never go back to Michigan or the people who've done what they've done to me again. I've tried that multiple times, and they just take it as a validation to continue with their....whatever it is. Sociopathy? Psychological Grooming? Whatever it is, I can't go back to it, and I can't stay somewhere where I'm not allowed to drive with valid car insurance without having to go to court. And how could I even imagine getting a job or apartment anyway, considering I'll never trust another white person again after my experience with college professors and students, the supposed vanguard of progressive thought.
That supposed “vanguard of progressive thought” for whom it's all about ego and insecurity in the end, not progress. It's about competition and coercion, not progress. It's about owning a bunch of crap you don't need and slapping a “simplify your life” sticker on the back of your Prius AND your $80K SUV with two kayaks on top, not progress. It's about nepotism and getting your people in over better qualified people, not progress. It's about saying you want to save Africa while you sit in your castle in Ireland, not progress. It's about writing a song called white privilege without mentioning that it was your own white privilege that got your song about a thrift store a Grammy without even shouting out Rakim or Guru or any of the artists who actually had something to say and made hip hop available to you in the first place but never won a Grammy, not progress. It's about two presidential candidates yelling at each other about whose more racist without either putting any real plan on the table about how to end systematic police violence in poor, predominantly African-American neighbourhoods, not progress. It's about trying to show how “cool and down” you are instead of trying to understand why the people who you stole from their homeland and then raped and enslaved and then freed and threw into ghettos don't trust you, not progress.
And honestly, I didn't mean to go off on this tangent but it has to happen, and it's going to be very “rant-orical” and non-linear.. Because where I'm at right now, and I don't think I feel alone in this, I don't even know if I could even accept my dream job(s) or dream grad school(s) if I knew a white person of any persuasion (religious, sexual, social, whatever) was going to be my superior. And I don't even really associate with any group what-so-ever, racially or otherwise (I've always been like & related to that kid in the horror movie Bones, who they say “I dont even know what you are” to in regards to his race. I've had people assume I'm Italian, Jordanian, Jewish, full on African-American, full on European-American and once even "albino aboriginal"...um, ok?). I'm in this on my own, but I empathize with anybody who's undergone hardship just to be themselves. I would LOVE to someday work for a non-military research based group in NASA (or the IRS or something like that). That's been a dream since the first Audobon Society field guide to the night sky book I bought for me when I was a kid. I remember once my “family” took us out to some museum in Toronto and there was this huge star map (at least like 15 ft by 15ft) showing the actual satellite imagery with a magnifying glass you could slide over the whole table. I was entranced, thinking about all the things I read in NatGeo and such about how far the galaxies and such really were and how I wanted to do that...know how far these things were from each other and what happens with them. I could've spent days...but I got yelled at after about 5 minutes and never got to talk about it (until now I guess) or pursue it. And that was white people in charge of me. It was always about keeping me “poor, stupid, and alone” which is a type of psychological grooming that I know other people are familiar with. That's what busing kids out of their neighbouhoods was about. That's what segregation on the social, academic, and economic levels was all about. And so after all that, where does the trust come from that allows someone to “shake the bosses hand and be in their company”. You don't beat and rape and otherwise someone for years and say “Here's a job!” and expect them to really ever trust you, do you? There a kids out there with more promise than my “old ghetto” self but with less opportunity than me, and with more hardships than I've had (and that, specifically, is really sad to me). Kids enamored with academics and progress and good, positive things like that. Kids of all races, persuasions, and whatever else. Those kids have to be identified, no matter where they are or what they look like or who they want to date or whatever. Those kids have to be given an exceptional chance at success when they show an exceptional aptitude for knowledge and its application, no matter what. If they come from a bad place in life, they need exceptional counseling to help them achieve their potential. If the come from an economically depressed place in life, they need exceptional assistance, be it public or private assistance. All of the platitudes and wishes in the world won't change a thing. If you want the best people with the best ideas and the ability to execute those ideas, you have to accept the fact that these people are individuals who might not fit your idea of the perfect candidate. If a gay, octo-racial, post-gender 8 foot 6 inch 19 year old living in a project building has a feasible plan for the cleanest energy source possible, you GIVE that person an exceptional chance to flesh out that idea, you don't talk about it and debate about it and then never really do anything about it. You REALLY PUT ASIDE YOUR PREJUDICES, not just talk about it and never do anything about it because it's easier to tell other people to not be prejudiced than it is to really examine the prejudices lying (dormant or active) in your own mind (or heart or soul or whatever you call it).
- 3) It keeps me going on an emotional and psychological level. There's not a whole lot for me to look forward to outside of academia. If/when I graduate, I have to move from here and I don't have friends anywhere or relatives anywhere. I don't have references for jobs or apartments. I would never go back to Michigan or the people who've done what they've done to me again. I've tried that multiple times, and they just take it as a validation to continue with their....whatever it is. Sociopathy? Psychological Grooming? Whatever it is, I can't go back to it, and I can't stay somewhere where I'm not allowed to drive with valid car insurance without having to go to court. And how could I even imagine getting a job or apartment anyway, considering I'll never trust another white person again after my experience with college professors and students, the supposed vanguard of progressive thought.
4) It's just what I love to do. I can't get tired of the subject matter. Not even when I'm not “allowed” to study it or be amongst people who study it. Not even when I'm frustrated with a project. There are so many opportunities to advance thought in mathematics and applicable sciences, and so what's not for me to love? I can apply mathematical concepts to study stars? I can use mathematics to study economic systems and find ways to improve a system (eg; social security) that's good in theory, but faltering in practice? Which in turn will improve the lives of people who are (temporarily OR permanently) dependent on those systems? I can learn and be part of the building and understanding of a language that describes the generalized processes that govern all sorts of abstract concepts that in turn govern the world around us? What's not for me to love? I love it so much that I'm willing to take chances, experiment with ideas, write those experiments & their results down, and put it out there. I love it so much that I do that knowing that some of what I've done is incorrect, and that those mistakes can be rectified by myself or someone else who can “put a fresh pair of eyes on it”. I love being a link in a chain that represents growth and refinement of knowledge. Progress, they call it. I spend hours and hours and undergo periods of work induced "neurosis" to be part of that. I have multiple drawers and file cabinets filled with lecture notes ,practice problems, problems I've come up with and had to calculate and take notes on, outlines for projects, and all of that stuff that people call “the work that goes in to it”. It's ridiculously difficult, it's ridiculously frustrating, and it's ridiculously worth it. Because I love it despite all that (and maybe even BECAUSE of all that).