generative spirals

I'm finally starting to get back into school life again. When I was back at home over break I felt like I never wanted to leave my house ever again. I didn't want to go back to school, but I didn't want to work either. All I wanted to do was read and write and do art (and be with my family). I was so adamant about it that my mom even offered that I could take a block off if I wanted to - but I realized that I would regret not going back. Before coming to university, I had never been away from home and my family before. In some ways, I understand that it is important to start learning to provide for myself and survive on my own, but at the same time, I find it such a foreign concept to be away from my house and my family and my old life for so long. At school as the months go by, you feel like everyone at home is starting to forget about you and move on, but then you go back for a break and you realize that everything is almost like you left it. It was comfortable to be home again, but now that I'm at school and far away, its comforting to know that my family (and my bed!) will be waiting for me until I come home next.

And its hard to pine about home much-because school is so busy right now. Math class is not as scary as I thought it would be, its actually really entertaining and I have been learning a lot. This term, there were 3 choices of math classes: math puzzles, history of math and modelling math. I chose the "math for the arts child class" which is history of math, and most of the kids in my class chose it because we hoped it would be the least math-oriented class. On the first day of school, we basically had a 2 hour counseling session led by our prof. Glen Van Brummelen about why we hated math. We went around the table sharing the scarring math experiences of our childhoods, most of them involving tyrant math teachers. After a lengthy discussion, we came to the conclusion that the reason our relationship with mathematics was so dysfunctional was due to the teaching methods we had experienced in our youth. We dubbed our past math experiences "drill sargent math training". My high school experience with math involved blindly copying and applying formulas to questions formulated in tattered textbooks that were last updated in 1976. It's hard to feel passionate about a subject when everything feels so mechanized and oppressive.

That's where my History of Mathematics class is different. Instead of just applying concepts and equations, we are learning about WHY we use them. Although plenty of math involved, it's not just a math class. I've learned about the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Greeks. I've learned about their histories as nations, and I have studied their philosophies and have come to understand how their mathematical discoveries made sense culturally. In addition to class work, historical inquiries and problem sets, a large portion of our final grade is geared towards an independent research project. Its pretty daunting: a 10-15 page paper due at the end of the semester, involving hours of late night library sessions. My topic is about the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence and their relationship with the naturally occurring spirals. Even though it is a large undertaking, the more I read about how math hides in leaf formation in plants, hurricanes and even music, the more I appreciate what I am learning about. I guess that I'm becoming a little bit of a math nerd. Thanks Glen.

caro