Reflections on a Mathcamp
This summer, I visited Mathcamp for two weeks. It was the first time in ten years that I haven't been there for the full five weeks; the first time in thirteen years that I have not been to an academic summer camp for its full duration. In my previous ten summers of Mathcamp, I missed a grand total of two days that I was eligible to attend (for a friend's wedding, clearly worth it!) and attended a day that I was not eligible to attend, thanks to a later flight.
At the end of last year, I gave a speech. It was the third speech I've given at camp, and I wanted to do something different. So although I put in some humor, and some typical end-of-Mathcamp emotion, the speech was meant to be a wake-up call, a "hard lesson learned." The lesson I meant to teach was this: sometimes, you have to do things that scare you.
And it didn't come out in the speech. I was misinterpreted by people I deeply respect, and by good friends. My delivery was the worst I've ever given in any public speaking situation. I didn't deliver my jokes right. You couldn't see it, but my hands were frozen on the podium. The emotion I felt within didn't come out the way it was supposed to: my voice was stoic, unfeeling, uncaring. People got the wrong message; that running Mathcamp was too easy, that it wasn't worth devoting my life to it. (It is. I would devote my life to making Mathcamp happen. Yes, I would rather start something of my own, because I find that I love creating things, but I would gladly give myself to making Mathcamp happen. Mathcamp was too easy because it didn't scare me anymore, except, apparently, for giving that speech. For leaving it.)
As I said, the message I had intended from the speech was that sometimes you have to do things that scare you. It scared me to do something other than Mathcamp, not because leaving Mathcamp itself was frightening, but because that implicitly untethered my life. Indeed, since then I have left graduate school to pursue a startup, and while I am thrilled with my projects, it's a much less stable situation on a much murkier life path. I wanted the campers who have just discovered this amazing place to realize that there is more out there, and that sometimes you have to leave a place like Mathcamp because it's the right thing to do. I've seen a lot of people who become dependent on the Mathcamp way of thinking, the Mathcamp kind of socialization, and Mathcamp friends, to the point of being unable to interact as well with the outside world and people who are different from Mathcampers. What I intended was also a warning against that mindset, against being locked into a Mathcamp mindset. There is somewhere a fine line between individualism and successfully interacting with others; is it possible that some of us are getting too close to individualism because of camp?
For me, it was also a fear that I had since my time as a JC: by going to Mathcamp, am I giving up something else that I should be doing? Should I be doing research, or an internship, or figuring out what I want to do with my life? My family always argued against Mathcamp, and I argued back. It was, above all else, what I wanted to do. And so I kept doing it while an undergraduate --- when perhaps I should have done an REU --- and while a graduate student --- when perhaps I should have been doing research. Until 2008, when I decided that I needed to do something that scared me, and I said, "no full-time Mathcamp, no grad school, let's do something else."
So this summer, I visited camp for just two weeks. It was fabulous. It was so easy to fall back into the routines of camp, to see old friends, to meet new ones. I had the best two weeks of my summer despite all the other responsibilities that prevented me from focusing on camp. I spent a lot of time thinking about where I'm going and what I'm doing, and I realized again something very important.
Mathcamp is home.
It's been nine years since I was a camper, but I haven't "outgrown" anything. There's no place I'd rather spend time than Mathcamp. There is no sense as rewarding as making this place happen; no place where I am as well-suited to helping to solve problems; no group of people I would rather be with; no environment in which I have more fun. Having now gone out and firmly planted myself in "other things," I'm at last comfortable just being at camp. If my schedule allows, perhaps I'll be able to go back for the full summer, and I won't feel like I'm missing out on something else to do, because I know that Mathcamp is rewarding for what it is. Now that I've found out how much I want to do education, in part because of Mathcamp, I realize that my summers there were never wasted (as if they could be). Now that I am working to start a nonprofit, I'm not worried that I will become set in the ways of Mathcamp: I shall be independent of camp even as camp is my home.
I've always known somehow that Mathcamp is home, but I also felt like I had to leave home at some point in my life. But now that I've left home, I'm comfortable going back to it if time allows; I have both grown beyond it and into it. Mathcamp is not a side-project; it is something that deserves full attention, and I hope that I'll continue to have a chance to devote myself to camp each summer, and whenever it needs me.
At the end of last year, I gave a speech. It was the third speech I've given at camp, and I wanted to do something different. So although I put in some humor, and some typical end-of-Mathcamp emotion, the speech was meant to be a wake-up call, a "hard lesson learned." The lesson I meant to teach was this: sometimes, you have to do things that scare you.
And it didn't come out in the speech. I was misinterpreted by people I deeply respect, and by good friends. My delivery was the worst I've ever given in any public speaking situation. I didn't deliver my jokes right. You couldn't see it, but my hands were frozen on the podium. The emotion I felt within didn't come out the way it was supposed to: my voice was stoic, unfeeling, uncaring. People got the wrong message; that running Mathcamp was too easy, that it wasn't worth devoting my life to it. (It is. I would devote my life to making Mathcamp happen. Yes, I would rather start something of my own, because I find that I love creating things, but I would gladly give myself to making Mathcamp happen. Mathcamp was too easy because it didn't scare me anymore, except, apparently, for giving that speech. For leaving it.)
As I said, the message I had intended from the speech was that sometimes you have to do things that scare you. It scared me to do something other than Mathcamp, not because leaving Mathcamp itself was frightening, but because that implicitly untethered my life. Indeed, since then I have left graduate school to pursue a startup, and while I am thrilled with my projects, it's a much less stable situation on a much murkier life path. I wanted the campers who have just discovered this amazing place to realize that there is more out there, and that sometimes you have to leave a place like Mathcamp because it's the right thing to do. I've seen a lot of people who become dependent on the Mathcamp way of thinking, the Mathcamp kind of socialization, and Mathcamp friends, to the point of being unable to interact as well with the outside world and people who are different from Mathcampers. What I intended was also a warning against that mindset, against being locked into a Mathcamp mindset. There is somewhere a fine line between individualism and successfully interacting with others; is it possible that some of us are getting too close to individualism because of camp?
For me, it was also a fear that I had since my time as a JC: by going to Mathcamp, am I giving up something else that I should be doing? Should I be doing research, or an internship, or figuring out what I want to do with my life? My family always argued against Mathcamp, and I argued back. It was, above all else, what I wanted to do. And so I kept doing it while an undergraduate --- when perhaps I should have done an REU --- and while a graduate student --- when perhaps I should have been doing research. Until 2008, when I decided that I needed to do something that scared me, and I said, "no full-time Mathcamp, no grad school, let's do something else."
So this summer, I visited camp for just two weeks. It was fabulous. It was so easy to fall back into the routines of camp, to see old friends, to meet new ones. I had the best two weeks of my summer despite all the other responsibilities that prevented me from focusing on camp. I spent a lot of time thinking about where I'm going and what I'm doing, and I realized again something very important.
Mathcamp is home.
It's been nine years since I was a camper, but I haven't "outgrown" anything. There's no place I'd rather spend time than Mathcamp. There is no sense as rewarding as making this place happen; no place where I am as well-suited to helping to solve problems; no group of people I would rather be with; no environment in which I have more fun. Having now gone out and firmly planted myself in "other things," I'm at last comfortable just being at camp. If my schedule allows, perhaps I'll be able to go back for the full summer, and I won't feel like I'm missing out on something else to do, because I know that Mathcamp is rewarding for what it is. Now that I've found out how much I want to do education, in part because of Mathcamp, I realize that my summers there were never wasted (as if they could be). Now that I am working to start a nonprofit, I'm not worried that I will become set in the ways of Mathcamp: I shall be independent of camp even as camp is my home.
I've always known somehow that Mathcamp is home, but I also felt like I had to leave home at some point in my life. But now that I've left home, I'm comfortable going back to it if time allows; I have both grown beyond it and into it. Mathcamp is not a side-project; it is something that deserves full attention, and I hope that I'll continue to have a chance to devote myself to camp each summer, and whenever it needs me.