Rivers are made of math. Yes, they're made of water. I would know, I've worked in one for years. All my work experience has been feet on the ground, in the river (in the mud), serving children and underprivileged families. But this river I worked in is also made of fluid dynamics, the flux of vectors across a stray branch, and circulation curves. I resisted falling in love with math for a very long time. But there's something about the pursuit: I can't quit while I'm ahead. I have to struggle and fail again. I have yet to encounter a version of math that I cannot beat by dogged hard work: I am addicted to the eventual emergence on top. The moment I fell in love with math came when I was seventeen. Many years past when I realistically needed to take it any longer, and many years past when, to any outsider, I probably should have given up. My Calculus III - Analytic Geometry professor was explaining something we like to describe as walking in a creek, and the image remains clear as day years later: The water, probably freezing, scrambling over your feet; arch flexing as it adapts to your balance; a wobbly, meandering path from one bank to another; gravel digging in the space between your toes. This is ultimately a wiggly path perpendicular to a current flowing. A circulation curve over a vector field. That singular moment, that mental image, makes me fall in love with my studies over and over again. I want to cross-reference math and biology; I want to write the synthesis that already exists and is just begging to be translated into computable equations and biological molecules. Because I am so in love with it, and apparently no one else is, I am called to and bound to serve this specific niche of a moral obligation. As someone pursuing higher education, I have a moral obligation to endeavor to understand what makes the world tick, in some discipline. But as someone who has lived real life and worked real work, I refuse to take abstract knowledge and run, and only learn for the sake of learning, without in turn giving that knowledge to someone else down the line. I refuse to work without getting my hands dirty, and without that work giving back in some way. I will serve others through the research I am doing. My lab uses applied math to find commonalities in the shapes of diseased cells, to help doctors identify these diseases without genetic sequencing. I will serve others by earnest listening in the invaluable lessons I could always stand to learn from them. I will serve others by philosophizing, and by stepping down from that soapbox when enough is enough, and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. But I can’t resist it occasionally slipping out, and so I tell everyone who will listen that rivers are made of math.

Rivers are made of math. Yes, they're made of water. I would know, I've worked in one for years. But they're also made of fluid dynamics, the flux of vectors across a stray branch, and circulation curves. I resisted falling in love with math for a very long time. I began high school algebra when I was twelve years old, and it was incredibly difficult. The options were to sink or to swim, and I sank. I tried calculus-based physics when I was sixteen, and lucked out when a TBI became the primary reason I was struggling. But there's something about the pursuit: I can't quit while I'm ahead. I have to struggle and fail again. I have yet to encounter a version of math that I cannot beat by dogged hard work: I am addicted to the eventual emergence on top. I have spent my life holistically. I regularly dig my toes into dirt, take care of earthworms and snails, know how to garden, name various endemic plant species. Life is all around: it’s in the grass I stomped on, the new baby cousin I just met, the mold I cultured and extracted DNA from for fun as a kid. I want to get down to the nitty gritty of why these things tick: I want to know the basis of life, and then I want to use it to make a current life better. I am called to cross-reference math and biology: I will write down the synthesis that already exists and is just begging to be translated into computable equations and biological molecules. Because I am so in love with it, and apparently no one else is, I am called to and bound to serve this specific niche of a moral obligation. Because, even though I think everyone sees it, no one seems to want to shout it, or appreciate it, or harness it. I talk of these abstract things to my mother, who has built a career before earning her degree a few years before I graduated high school. Or I tell my father, whose back is still messed up from years of roofing. And I know: I cannot in good conscience continue down my path of learning just in this abstract: I feel an innate need to apply it somewhere. My sole goal, academic and professional, is to serve others, and I know with absolute certainty that I will achieve it. I will serve others through the research I am doing, to find mathematical commonalities in the shapes of diseased cells, to help doctors identify these diseases without genetic sequencing. I will serve others by earning some form of doctorate, and by not simply absorbing more information but now providing it. I will serve others by finding some way to give back, to apply this knowledge, to make it tangible and a solution for someone’s hurt. I will serve others by teaching them in these subjects that I know and love, and earnestly listening to them in the invaluable ones I could stand to learn from them. I will serve others by inspiring and pontificating and philosophizing, and by stepping down from that soapbox when enough is enough. But I can’t resist this thing I’m in love with occasionally slipping out, and so I tell everyone who will listen that rivers are made of math. In my photos: I don’t have a good photo of anything certain I plan to be, other than outside and happy.