I have been enjoying my education for the past two and a half years. It has perhaps been the most challenging task I’ve attempted and recently I have been in a state of flux, I am questioning my motives for why I study at all.
I love physics, so it pained me to leave it. I remember it as a core motivation for all the things I was doing and now I’ve excluded it from my studies, switching all my attention to “pure” maths. However, I am still motivated by physics as it connects these abstract worlds in which I find myself to something more real. I have also found its importance and beauty which is recognised by those I’ve met who work and live through it.
There is a feeling of absolute truth to the study of mathematics which physics simply cannot satisfy in me. This is in part for the reason of my current priority towards it or at least, my goal to give physics some level of certainty through mathematics. My curiosity about the world, of perception and of thought gives rise to this interest in mathematical physics, even towards the surface of mathematical logic. These are not unique curiosities and luckily for me, people through the ages have asked these questions and have collectively been working towards understanding their world.
As a kid, my curiosity was peeked looking at mechanics and astronomy and being amazed through my small personal discoveries. Electricity and magnetism were a very early wonder as I would constantly be making electric magnets from AA or 9 volt batteries, found wire and nails, not understanding the deeper underlying physics but understanding enough to build and test them. It wasn’t until high school that I was beginning to gain a better knowledge of how these amazing devices worked. I suppose I am still fascinated by them but as I learnt more and more my interests were directed at devices and ideas with greater perplexing wonder.
University (well a book I read along side a physics course) really showed me a deeper understanding to electromagnetism through Maxwell’s equations for which I only still have a fairly shallow understanding.
The natural world is both beautiful and mysterious and these are the stems of pleasures for the activities I subject myself to. Mathematics however has really opened a new world of possibilities, giving me a new lens to see reality and even now directing my attention to thought, reason and the self. This has proven to be the most difficult activity I have found myself in so far. It is testing my patience, attention and devotion to what I considered to be my core motivation.
I would like to be a scientist, a mathematician, a philosopher, an artist but these are titles and I have begun to think that to ‘be’ something is to pamper to an idealised notion of some category which fits all the positive associations of some specific people outside myself to a classifying name. For me, to desire to be these names is to lead myself away from what I want to give my attention and ultimately I see myself walking down the path of learning and expression.
Shay's Maths and Art 