Dreaming of Calculus
Just as I was waking, I had a dream in which I was in a library working on advanced mathematics problems from a textbook. I seem to remember it was logic, or calculus, or a combination of both. A woman was urging me to hurry up, so I could check out and she could take me to where we were going. I had to check out the book I was working from, and so I opened it to the back cover. The pocket in which the check-out card was stashed was covered with some form of sticker. I tried peeking into the pocket, to see who had checked it out last, and the name “Skyl” came up. The pronunciation was “skile”. When I woke up, I tried googling Skyl, skyl calculus, skyl calculus logic, and a few other combinations, but I did not get anywhere. So I am no closer to finding out who or what Skyl is than I was when I woke up.
The dream kind of made me depressed in a way. Years ago, in high school, I was very much into mathematics and science. I wanted to be a high school teacher or a college professor. However, my Calculus teacher advised me that I should go into Engineering. I respected him greatly, and so I took his advice, even though I didn’t have a clue what engineering was about. I just knew that I was smart enough to do it, and had my ego fed by someone I respected. And that’s about as far as it got.
I went to school, only to drop out because 1) I didn’t have money 2) I liked to consume alcohol. 3) I liked pot 4) I was undisciplined, and did not have the internal guidance mechanism to get me to where I wanted to go rather than allowing others to influence my actions and reactions.
So here I am, some 25 years later, working a more or less dead end job and using none of the intelligence, skills or capabilities I had when I was a kid. I’ll be paying student loans off for a very long time, so I don’t think I’ll be going back to school anytime soon to pursue that PhD in Mathematics that I wanted when I was in high school. It makes me feel old, and unfulfilled.
True, I’ve made some good friends over the years, had some great adventures, and did some things that I never would have conceived of all that time ago. Nevertheless, I cannot shake that unfulfilled feeling of non-accomplishment. The mental muscles I had years ago have atrophied, and who knows what I’ve done to my liver. I’d like to ge back to school, get some advanced degrees, and spend the rest of my life teaching higher math to kids just starting out. However, short of winning the lottery, I really don’t see how on this green planet that I would be able to do that.
