I don't want to sleep yet, and I've been spending the last few months trying to figure out what I actually want to do with my life (to the despair of my parents, I'm afraid), so I thought I would post about each option. This might be boring for you guys, but you don't have to read it. And I think it might help me figure some stuff out.

First up, grad school (in math):
Well, it's sort of the obvious choice for me. My advisor, my parents, most of my professors, etc. think that I am going. It's beginning to seem like the easy way out for me. And I'm not really sure I want it. I went to a meeting earlier this year about grad schools and such and something Paul Sally (for those of you who don't know him, Paul Sally is a math professor who wears an eyepatch, has a 'pegleg,' and likes to say 'Honors Analysis? That's kickass mathematics!' very often. For obvious reasons, many of us call him the pirate. No one has had the guts to get him a parrot for his shoulder yet, but it's sure to come) said really resonated with me. He said something along the lines of 'Don't bother to go to math grad school unless you're really really sure.' And I'm not. I'm not sure I have the talent, the drive, or the desire to do pure math.

Maybe I do. I enjoyed the research I did last summer, and I think I worked harder than I ever have in my life. Even though I knew next to nothing about the subject going in, I got a lot out of the project. But despite that, I don't really want to do a similar program this summer. I might even just want to go back to the movie theater or do some sort of program that isn't pure research. I want to be sort of relevant. Properties of covering spaces of the punctured torus, cool as they are, don't have any practical implications. When I finished that project, I wrote a paper that probably about 15 people in the world read and that is now in some Indiana Jones-esque basement at the NSF.

I don't think I want my life to be about producing papers that only 50 or 100 people in the world care about. I want to have some small impact on the world (yes, I know I'm young-- suck it), and I don't think pure math is the way to do this.

Now I understand that if I were working for any university researching math, I would also be teaching. Ah, there's my chance to have a big impact on young minds, right? That just ties into my other problem with going to grad school in math. I really hate classes. I don't think this is sort of a general 'classes are a necessary evil' type attitude. People who've taken classes with me can confirm that I can't sit still, rarely go to class, clock-watch like a mofo and am generally miserable the whole time I'm there. I used to think this would get better, classes would get more interesting as I got more advanced. But so far almost the opposite seems true. I mean, I spent 30 minutes yesterday trying to justify skipping the second day of topology (I didn't for those of you keeping score). Why would I want to put myself through an additional five years of this? And how can I teach something I can't sit through myself?

In a way, though, it would be so easy to go to grad school. I wouldn't have to get up early or look for a job next year. Maybe I could even continue here at Chicago, so I'd barely have to move. Maybe I'd even be happy. But it seems like quite a gamble for me to be risking my life (or some significant portion thereof) on.

Anyway, Sunday or Monday I'll talk about other careers I've considered. Including, but not limited to, zamboni driver, foreign service, grad school (engineering), aerospace tech, cryptanalysis, and professional spades player.