When I was in college, I was pretty proud of the fact that I was an engineering student. I loved feeling “smart” even if on relative terms I was not always the sharpest in the class. I liked feeling smart so much that I would memorize mathmatical concepts and reiterate them in unexpecting moments.
There was one night while I was out at a bar in Urbana-Champagn, I think, where a young man physically got in my way to deliberately block me as I was walking, maybe to the bathroom. He said, “Tell me something interesting.” I said, “Please move.” He said, “For real, tell me something interesting, and then I’ll move.” I rolled my eyes at him and, thinking it would scare him off, I wittily replied, “Fine. ‘e’ to the ‘i’ pi equals negative one.” (just saying, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever spelled that equation out).
This guy wasn’t scared off. No, he was not! He responded to my smart-ass comment with a huge bear hug while informing me that that was the “hottest thing a girl in a bar has ever said” to him and that he was a mathematics phd student. Go figure…
What’s my point with that story? Well, I guess I don’t have one, other than I have finished the Koans and have started working on the Euler project puzzles. Those are a lot of fun!
I did one with my guru mentor yesterday, and I have to admit that I was impressed with myself that I not only solved it, but did it while under the pressure of having someone watch me. I thought I was going to go blank. I have almost completed the second one today—but did get as far as having it spit out the Fibonacci sequence. That took some thought, and my code is a mess still, but [pause for emphasis] it works! It even adds up the even numbers within the sequence. So that’s very cool. I’m feeling a pride and a sense of accomplishment that I haven’t felt in a really long time.