My dream version of myself is a person who uses his strong command of legal knowledge and expertise who helps defend the innocent of his community by upholding the principles of justice through prosecution in a court of law.

As a student who majors in criminology and sociology with a minor in history, I am not exactly the first image that pops into a person's head when they think of math. While this may be true, I appreciate and love mathematics greatly, though the reason behind my infatuation with the subject may be different from that held by others. The world that I spend my time in every day as a student of law and history is one built up of opposing philosophies, where one viewpoint possesses no more true merit than the next and the foundation of one's belief system shifts as easily as tides in a storm. In this field, there is not much in the way of outlooks or beliefs that you get to hold onto as sacred or true. Everything is subjective and emotionally charged, leading to difficult situations regarding communicating with your peers. In the face of the raging storm and culture wars that represent the criminal justice system, the binary nature of mathematics, being either right or wrong, is calming. My favorite thing about math is getting to the end of an equation you have solved correctly and knowing that it is correct and it is the truth. One of the things that I appreciate most about mathematics is its ability to shed the light of truth onto the muddied waters of the field that I study. When you look at a case or an issue in criminology, the issue typically just boils down to the hard facts behind a particular crime or the statistics behind a societal ailment. More often than not these facts are figures and trajectories derived from complex equations employed by forensics experts and coroners or wider studies conducted by statisticians. Sometimes mathematics represents a sunbeam of truth piercing through the clouds to touch otherwise stormy seas below.