Nausea and Proofs

As I have mentioned before, I have a class right now called Mathematical Inquiry, and I have discovered something: I get physically sick when going through proofs. My stomach tightens up, I get light-headed, and I clench my jaw. There have been times sitting in class when I have almost gotten up and left the room because I couldn't stand it anymore.

This may be an adverse reaction to my experiences with Bjorge in 8th grade. It may just be that I hate going through how you come to a conclusion. If you get a conclusion, and it's correct, I don't care how you came to it, just tell me what it is and how I can use it. And I think that is the real problem: I'm proving things that I can confidently say I will never use again for the rest of my life. How often does the proof that the square root of 2 is an irrational number come up in the music business? POINTLESS PROOFS = UNNECESSARY PROOFS = WASTE OF MY TIME. And the teacher teaches like the guy on PBS who does those landscape paintings paints: all smiles and no substance. Sure the guy can say "Now, we're just gonna add a little mountain here, with some snow," but that doesn't help my skill at all. The same is true when the guy says, "Now, we're just gonna stick a little theorem here, with some formulas." Give me cancer now.