How I Stopped Producing Good Mathematics
and musings on motivation.
My grandfather loved mathematics. He believed that having a deep understanding and fondness for the subject – a feeling I now approximate to be an ‘intuition’ – was a worthy endeavor. So he preached this gospel to any school-aged soul whose feet crossed our compound lines. And in my case, whenever report cards came back, he was especially interested in my mathematics grade – how I felt about it and less so the specific grade.
Were I pleased with my performance, his smile would broaden, head bob, arms extend, and I would find myself in his filling, warm embrace. He lived vicariously through my excellence. And, naturally, every visitor to the house would hear about this young mathematics champion. My mini-achievement would be the talk of the town. I was the star, his star. And when the next examination came by, I had another kick to do well.
As the years rolled by and the world took me farther from my grandfather’s endearing hug, I found other, cheaper motivations to do mathematics.
The Jesuit school I attended between the ages 10 and 16 made it a point, after each major assessment, to print and publish subject-by-subject grades, an overall average, and a year rank for each student in their respective classes – on a single 210 by 297 millimeters sheet, often stapled on the blue-tacked notice boards in the front of each class.
After grades were published in one particular cycle, I overheard another student, an acquaintance, who sat behind me, mutter to their friend, “What happened to Joel?”
“I know right. He’s not [good] anymore,” their friend replied.
My math grade had dropped 20 points. My year rank 40 places.
Some weeks later while preparing for the next examination, our observant acquaintance asked a mutual friend to solve a particularly challenging mathematics problem. Mutual friend refers our observer to me, “Joel’s solved it. Go ask him.”
Observer retorts, “Please, can you just do it for me? Joel isn’t serious anymore.”
I eventually got word of this situation.
I recall not being particularly upset at my bad performance in mathematics.
I did, however, shudder at being labelled as incapable of helping – and by extension, in that context, incompetent.
This label set off a distinct ringer in my head and tugged my soul in a manner I could – at that time – not describe.
Without ever consciously resolving what (exact mathematics fundamentals) I struggled with, I was yanked back into mode. By the next term, I was beating myself up for missing only two points on a test and, ultimately, found myself atop those rankings. The ringer in my head was momentarily reduced to vibrations.
Whenever I got what processes or habits I changed to 'do well,' I could never give a definite answer. I assumed I just got a hang of how to work school. That I had developed better studying habits – or whatever fanciful stuff we said at that time. In any case, while these improvements may have happened, they were only a consequence of this new-found, I'll-show-them motivation. You could convincingly argue that this redirection worked – I mean, ‘look at the grades.’
Yet, my soul was not drawn any closer to mathematics.
My motivations to do it – to do it well – were cheap.
Cheap motivation doesn't scale when producing good mathematics.
When I first drafted this essay, I arrived at a different conclusion. I concluded that, like my grandfather, I might have developed a fondness for seeing or helping people find and work through their own passions. There's evidence in my current work and interests that this is true – or at least close. However, I found the aforementioned – cheap motivation – to be much more potent, simpler, and revealing about my current struggles with producing good mathematics. Now that's out of the way, here’s that alternative conclusion.
Six years on, I now know why (I could not articulate what I fixed): because there was no conscious change. My soul was simply reoriented and latched onto some new motivation. It seems, like my grandfather, I had developed a fondness for seeing – and perhaps helping – people find or work through their passions. Not necessarily mathematics, but the process of finding it, something.
These days, in college, I serve as a consultant at my school’s writing center. It is different work. It's fun work. I get to talk through essays, applications, and personal statements with my peers – to help them find their voice. I now offer the same smile and encouragement I once received from my grandfather when clients share their progress.
Consequently, I have hinged a good chunk of my pump to doing good writing – and get my most significant kick of the week in those few hours I’m at the center. Simultaneously, I am no longer the mathematics champ I once was. I haven't had the burden of proof to be. I no longer produce good mathematics. It is possible, I suspect, I never did produce good mathematics.
Whatever the case, I now want something different.
And I know exactly where to start.
In the few weeks while drafting this, I told myself and friends that there are always motivations to dream, to do. We can dream for ourselves, our families, communities, for future generations, and even for the sake of it.
The most persevering people I have met seem to have many – often private – secure motivations to chase these dreams. When the chips are down at work, they have friends and music to fall back on. When the weather is dull and teary – as it is while I write this – they are grateful for the beautiful scents and sleep the rain afford.
These people, I think, are not necessarily more optimistic than the next person. Instead, they seem to have invited, internalized, and mastered selecting the set of motivations to face any challenge. Maybe that's one definition of optimism, ha!
Slowly, with care,
Joel