I was in the eighth grade sitting in algebra one when my teacher accused me of cheating in front of the entire class, subsequently crushing my mathematic aspirations. He claimed I was doing “too well” on my assignments to be completing them honestly. The truth was that I needed to take a placement exam to test into a math class for high school, so I began applying myself so I could test well. Needless to say, I was humiliated and furious, and that experience ended my mathematical interests.
Image: AJ Cann
But that teacher wasn’t a anomaly. He was a norm, one in a long string of bad math teachers. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I found one I connected with, and I chose my schedule in succeeding years so that I could get him as a teacher again. Unfortunately, however, that teacher came too late; there had already been too many bad teachers’ feet to trample on my computational skills.
But here’s the catch: I love astrophysics. From supermassive black holes to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, I am fascinated by space. It’s for this reason that I chose to take astronomy C10, introduction to general astronomy, this semester. But no love affair with science can change the one thing I struggle with in that class: math. Each passing problem reminds me that even though I choose to challenge myself, I am mathematically unworthy of being an astrophysicist.
And I’m not the only one who feels this way. What about students whose hobbies can’t make for a career because they aren’t “good enough?” Many people find themselves with an inclination to join a career for which they are not well-suited. Will they be forced to accept a less than ideal job?
Freshman Tyler Moy remarks: “I had an English teacher in high school who made me fall in love with literature. But I already had aspirations in the sciences—to become a doctor, specifically—and I feel like I might have chosen something different had I been shown real literature earlier on.” Of course, it’s never too late to recalibrate: to evaluate your happiness in your career or major, and to choose to alter your course to something completely different. Realistically, however, this may not be so easy. Going back to re-educate yourself in order to change careers is costly and time-consuming. Changing from a humanities to a STEM major may involve taking on extra years of school or accepting the burden of a major toward which your academic skill set is not well-suited. Making that shift is easier said than done.
So how do we avoid this? Put simply, breadth is key. We should do our best to encourage students to engage in multiple fields of study when they are young in order to cultivate talents in more than one area. This will allow them to choose a career without worrying about the competition of being the best. Of course there are jobs to which people are naturally better suited—I’m not going to pretend like I’m a better mathematician than I am a writer. But a broad curriculum is best, and it will eventually lead to students choosing to do what they love and not simply what they are good at.
Cover image: Adam Evans
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