There isn't much calculus saturating my brain anymore. After three years of various levels of coursework I can recall terms and half-definitions but am unable to write a valid equation. At least, not one would properly represent the education I have received. At some point I shed my abilities to interpret limits and derivatives and even the quadratic equation.
I do distinctly remember something from Calculus I, however.
Okay, I remember a couple things.
Most of these things are not going to assist me in solving an equation or word problem, but they do offer support in a less tangible but, perhaps, a more practical way. I don't remember much of class because I wasn't there very often. I wasn't in school very often. The material was difficult and I didn't really apply myself and lots of kids in that class cheated but I never did because if I wanted a good grade I should have been more proactive about it, right? I did want a good grade though. I really did. I always cared even if it didn't seem like it.
Our teacher always cared too. Students made fun of her and the structure of the class didn't always seem fair, but she did care. She retired the year that I graduated high school and before she left she told me to email her, that "she always enjoys hearing from students". Despite my absence and lackluster grades, she did not think any less of me.
She would often say, "an iiiiiinfinite number of possibilities". She would emphasize the beginning of the word infinite and end the phrase with a slight smile on her face and I'm smiling just hearing it in my head now.
I believe in an infinite number of possibilities.
I just finished reading the book, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge. The author chose a random day, and on that day, ten random child deaths that resulted from guns, and he told the story of those children. Those ten lives, and even more that day, all reached similar conclusions. But that was not their end.
Each life, especially each child's life, has an infinite number of opportunities. The limit of a life approaches infinity, The line of a life can travel forever, throughout space and time and an incomprehensible amount of variables. From this, I know that potential exists.
In Younge's book, he cites statistics and studies that frame each event as a doomed occurrence. These lives were doomed, to end in heartache or poverty or prison. They were doomed by the economy, the government, and the history of oppression in America. They were doomed by legislation. They barely had a chance.
And I agree. I have seen how hard families in low income areas work and the little reward. I have observed how economic oppression has created a harrowing divide among populations America. But, I have also read with a child. I have heard the aspirations of classrooms. My heart has swelled at the generosity of a third grader.
I understand the way that outside events have a way of breaking the line and ushering a life in a certain direction, but I also believe in the potential that resides in all of us.
I'm going to study my calculus and make sure my notation is correct before officially posting an equation. Hopefully there's a math scholar hiding in me, somewhere. There's potential.
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