Parents Got A New Cat They Named Lord Montague And This Morning I Heard My Dad In The Other Room Say

also a funny thing is happening

my title here on tumblr is "you can't comb a hairy ball" – hairy ball theorem, which says that whenever an n-dimensional sphere admits a continuous field of unit tangent vectors, n must be odd. I love how geometric this is, math is full of memes

anyway when I found out about it I was joking that my thesis will be on it. and now it's actually very likely that my first thesis will be about hairy manifolds, I can't wait till I can start writing

15 V 2022

I have a topology test this friday, not gonna lie I'm kinda stressed. this is my favourite subject and I am dedicating a great deal of time to learn it so if I get a low grade it undermines the efficiency of my work. everyone thinks I'm an "expert", but internally I feel like I lied to them. it's ridiculous, because I can solve all the theoretical problems fairly well but the moment I have to calculate something for a specific example of a space I am clueless. and it's about applying theory to problems, right? so what is it worth

other than that tomorrow is a participation round in the integral competition at my university. I am participating. I don't have any high hopes for this, because it's been a while since I practiced integration and I am not motivated to do so because it's not an important skill – wolfram exists. either way could be fun, that's why I decided to go there

I am dreading the fact that I'll have to sit down and learn all the material from the probability theory until the exams. I've been ignoring it completely so far, because it's boring and complicated. the last homework broke me, it's high time to get my shit together

free recall

here I am sitting and trying to learn something from a textbook by making notes and ugh I don't think this is gonna work

what I'm writing down will probably leave my head the second I switch tasks

today I found a cool video about taking notes during lectures and a method called free recall is mentioned there:

to summarize: taking notes during the lecture is ineffective, because it requires dividing attention into writing and processing the auditory input. instead of doing that one should just listen and then try to write down the contents of the lecture from memory. I can believe that – this is how I studied for my commutative algebra exam and the whole process went really fast. I highly recommens this guy's channel, he is a neuroscientist and bases his videos off of research findings

I will try to do this with textbooks and after a while I'll share how it felt and if I plan to keep doing it. the immediate advantage of this approach is that it gives raw information for what needs the most work and what can be skipped, which is often hard to see when trying to evaluate one's knowledge just by thinking about it. another thing that comes to mind is the accountability component – it is much easier to focus on the text while knowing that one is supposed to write down as much as possible after. kinda like the "gamify" trick I saw in the context of surviving boring tasks with adhd

I'll use this method to study differential geometry, algebraic topology, galois theory and statistics. let's see how it goes

in my country having a diagnosis is highly confidential, too. there is no such thing as "the government knowing about your diagnoses" unless you get evaluated for disability documentation (I have no idea how to translate this to english), which is your choice. besides, who knows when the diagnosis will be useful? waiting for a diagnostic appointment takes several months and is very expensive, so taking an opportunity to sort this thing out when it's possible is good. depending on where someone lives, it can be very harmful to say that having a diagnosis somehow creates disadvantages

at my university the support program for people with asd has been introduced two years ago. it took me almost a year to get everything done, a year of unnecessary suffering. treatment for depression with or wihout adhd can be completely different and having it on paper that in your personal circumstances ssri might not work can save so much time. when someone suspects adhd and the situation calls for introducing medication, it's nice to be able to try right away, not wait several months for a diagnosis. those are just some practical examples of how you never know when diagnosis might be useful

and the validation reason, yeah, that too, it's beneficial to have someone work with you through that stuff. moreover, with professional support there comes someone suggesting solutions and forms of help that one might not even thought of. there are shitty doctors, but there are good ones too, and I think we should talk more about how to find the right ones instead of demonizing getting help

By the way. Before you rush to get a professional diagnosis for a Brain Thing you should really weigh your options. Like do you just want to "prove it" or will this actually give you access to treatment you can't have otherwise? Are the treatment options available worth having the government know you're neurodivergent? Because sometimes it's better to keep things off the record because unfortunately we still live in a very deeply ableist society and you might not want to have more real material oppression stacked against you than you have to

The proof is left as an exercise to the IRS

maybe a littel late for Real’s Math Ask Meme 18, 6 and 3, please?

hi, thanks for the questions!

3: what math classes did you like the most?

tough choice! for the content itself I'd say abstract algebra, commutative algebra, analytic functions and algebraic topology. for the way the class was taught, a course on galois theory I took last semester was probably the best. the pace of the lecture allowed me to learn everything on the spot, not too fast, but not so slow that my mind would wander. the tutorials were also great, because the teacher found the perfect balance between explaining and showing the solutions, and engaging us to think about what should happen next. the courses I mentioned above were also taught well, but the galois theory one was absolutely perfect

6: why do you learn math?

I enjoy the feeling of math in my brain. I can spend hours thinking about a problem and not get bored, which doesn't usually happen with other things. when I finish a study session I feel tired in a good way, like I spent my time and energy doing something valuable and it's very satisfying

18: can you share a good math problem you've solved recently?

given a holomorphic line bundle L over a compact complex manifold, prove that L is trivial iff L and the dual of L both admit a non-zero section

this problem is quite basic, in a sense that you work on it right after getting started with line bundles, but I believe it to be a good problem, because it forces you to analyze the difference between trivial holomorphic bundles and trivial smooth bundles, so it's great for building some intuition

eigenvalues are just the TLDR for a matrix

28 V 2022

topology and analysis tests are over, both went I think alright

if I don't get 100% from topo I'm going to be very frustrated, because I studied hard and acquired deep understanding of the material – so far as to be able to hold a lecture for my classmate about any topic

analysis ughhh if I get ≥40% I will be overjoyed. but that's just the specifics of this subject, you study super hard and seem to be entirely ready, you solve all of the problems in prep and then best you can do is 40%. my best score so far was 42%, so anything more than that will be my lifetime record lmao, I want this so bad. I solved two problems entirely I think, which should give 40% already, and some pieces from two more, chances are I get 50%, which would be absolutely amazing

here are some pictures from me transforming math into an art project

stokes theorem

topology

I was thinking about how annoying I find what people say to me when I tell them that I'm not happy with how I'm doing at math. their first idea is to tell me how great I am and how all I do is good enough and shit like that. it doesn't help, it just feels like I am not being taken seriously. when I barely pass anything, am I really supposed to believe that everything is actually good? it feels like they skip getting to know my situation and just tell me what they would tell anyone, automatic

when I try to calm myself down and think something that will keep me going I don't try to force myself to be happy, fuck that, not being content with one's achievements is very fine, I believe not being happy all the time is fully natural and all that positivity feels so fake

instead what seems to work is asking myself where the rational threshold of being ok with how I'm doing is. the thing is I will never be satisfied, whatever I have, I always want more. but I can set the limits in advance and that stops me from falling into self-loathing loops

although what has really changed the game for me was getting a few good grades, finally I am achieving something, anything. people tell me that I should learn to be alright without this external reliance on achievements but how am I supposed to do that when the source of my low moods is precisely getting less than I want? I don't understand why I should brainwash myself into thinking that this is actually not what I want. the trick here is to separate the goal-orientedness from the sense of self-worth. the groundbreaking realization of mine was figuring out that I believe I deserve more than I get, that's why I am unhappy. so now that I am getting what I think what I deserve I obviously feel much better

21 VII 2023

oh god I haven't posted anything personal in a very long time

I've been super busy with exams, essays and then my thesis, all I did was sleeping and studying

I defended my thesis 40 minutes ago! it's done! in two months I am starting the master's degree program

this was probably the most brutal exam session I ever had lol it started a month ago and I had no day off since. after finishing my normal exams I've been working 12 hours per day to complete my thesis and thanks to my advisor who was working just as hard as me, we did it

I was so close to failing differential geometry. the exam was really bad, probably my worst ever. the questions were mostly about this one topic covered during the last class – we discussed maybe 3 problems and the professor decided that this is good enough lol basically we were supposed to read his mind and guess what else there is to learn. I scored 35% and apparently that's more than enough to pass – the grades go from 3 to 5 and I got 3.5, so that's literally "more than enough to pass". there were only 3 people who scored 50% or more, so yeah, that seems fair

that week of studying differential geometry was the most stressful week in the last 3 years, I fucking hate it when it's unclear what I'm supposed to learn and I have no idea how to do it. thank god I passed, I don't know how I would do it again before taking the september exam

anyway, I passed algebraic topology, number theory and algebra 2 with flying colors and the reviewers really loved my thesis! they strongly suggest publishing it, but I think I will try to finish the second part of the proof before I do that

I already found the advisor for my master's thesis, of course I don't know what it's gonna be about, but since I had some algebraic topology this year, I am thinking it's time to learn algebraic geometry now

sweet jesus it's finally over, I can't believe it. and something new is starting

funfact: in poland nobody really cares about eye contact, maybe other than people who want to have an intimate conversation with you like you'd have during a date or something

I was genuinely suprised when I learned that avoiding eye contact is a symptom of autism, because I didn't notice anybody ever trying to make it. I started paying attention to this whole thing after my diagnosis, where the doctor asked if I always look at the walls while talking to people. it turns out that people indeed are trying to look into my eyes even during the most mundane and routine interactions, but nobody (other than my now ex boyfriend who was so sad when he found out that I perceive eye contact as a threat) ever pointed it out as something that I should do. but then I see (presumably american or just non-polish) people talking about being offended by someone not making eye contact and I experience a massive cultural shock lol

girl i am not looking at your tits i prommy i just hate eye contact

ok i get it now, most people need plans and structures so then they can study what they're really into in the future

btw today i'm doing operations on topo spaces, i love that already

i gotta say i don't buy all them planning strategies and tips that require more effort than just sitting and doing the work

i mean that might help some people but i find that when i am doing something important to me i need no plans nor do i need motivation, i also don't procrastinate, everything falls into its right place

and if achieving something takes so much effort in preparation, is this even supposed to be a thing? idk, maybe that's the reason why i have no external proof of my work lol