It was Heinlein’s fault
As the unforgettable Erma Bombeck once said, “a writer is a person who absurd things happen to.”
In that vein, I am still wondering how a totally right brained person like myself ended up in a stem type program that requires calculus of several sorts-no joke, the left side of my brain is an empty hole. The right side works fine. It is good for poetry, children’s stories and any other information that could be remotely connected to humanities, philosophy or literature. The short answer to my dilemma is that it was Robert Heinlein’s fault.
Like any fully right brained child, I learned to read at an especially young age. I had not even developed past the magic believing phase of my childhood when I read “The Kingdom, of Carbonel,” by Barbara Sleigh. I climbed up the back stairs to the upper duplex in the building I lived in and crossed over (very dangerous) to the neighboring school building at dusk, fully expecting to see Barbara Sleighs cat country spread out in glorious detail by moonlight. It did not work, tho I was able to retrieve a basketball that was accidentally tossed up there.
As I got older, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys had me searching for clues to mysteries I made up in my head. Poor Jeannie, the neighbor girl who was younger than myself was drafted as my sidekick. She mainly liked it, I think. I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle and bullied poor Jeannie into dressing up with me as Mrs. Which and Mrs. What. We walked up and down the empty parking lot across talley and I tried very hard to “tesser.” It was a warm summer nigh and the grownups sitting in their lawn chairs in got a big kick out of it.
I never had a lot of talent for math Long division was my nemesis but boy could I read. I got snared by the Heinlein juveniles; Have Space Suit, Will Travel, The Rolling Stones, and Red Planet. I also got caught by Rocket Ship Galileo. I branched out to the works of Eleanor Cameron, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and C.S, Lewis’ sci fi story, Out of the Silent Planet. These were books that changed my experience of the real world and I got the notion that math is the language of physics, engineering or any other kind of worthwhile learning. I became acquainted with Andrew Jackson Libby in “Misfits,” Hazel Stone, in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and many others all of whom could work the highest maths with as much facility as I would have with using a toaster. They even seemed like regular people, who were adjusted to their environments. They were just like the guy next door or even like me.
“Dad, what’s a hyper ideal?
Memorable words spoken by Pollux, one of the “unheavenly twins,” Castor and Pollux in the Rolling Stones. Their dad for me said “I’m not too much not concerned with any course that does not require a slide rule and tables.” He believed that anything else could be learned by anyone with good reading skills.
I was thusly introduced to math as something I could accomplish by characters I knew and admired and could identify with and they were my examples. They were all brought to me by Robert Heinlein. The arch nemesis of the right brained.
IT WAS HIS FAULT!
That I ended up in a top engineering, math and physics university like New Mexico Tech. I still have not learned deferential, integral or vector calculus but I have not given up…yet.