F(x) and other things I can't define

Lost identities, academic disillusionment, and the strange grief of outgrowing ambition through math I never wanted to learn

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be. I’ve lamented this far too many times before, and in this vicious cycle, I’ve felt the flood of ‘you’re so young, you don’t have to’s and seen this as a temporary life vest that slowly dissolves each time I need to keep my head above water.

So why the hell can’t I let it go?

There was a time when I sat on my bedroom floor planning out what I would do after I left high school. My walls were covered with Frank Sinatra memorabilia, my favorite candle burned on my bookshelf brimming with stories I had studied, and the clothes I was wearing lay on my body in ways that I was proud to have envisioned. I was a student, a waitress, top of my class, a valued friend, fashionably sound, and marketed as “destined for great things”. I had worked so debilitatingly hard that I knew exactly what I was doing it for.

Presently, my walls remain nearly bare, I can’t find a candle I enjoy— even if my life depended on it— and for reasons I can’t even describe, I loathe my wardrobe entirely. I left a context in which my identity could be easily defined and plopped myself in the middle of a conversation I was entirely too unprepared to have with myself.

“What does this make you now?”

An easy answer: I have no idea.

I’m sitting in calculus class again, being asked to determine whether the Maclaurin series for f(x) converges or diverges at x=6. I’m staring at my exam, watching the people around me scribble out their answers, their faces a much more lively shade than mine. I have the base knowledge, I know how to recite the expansion, yet I can’t apply it in any helpful way within the ten minutes I have to write out an entire page of seemingly meaningless numbers. So, I leave f(x) undefined, fail the exam, and cry the entire drive home.

Two months later, I forfeited my offer to go to college, and celebrated my escape from ever feeling like I was stuck under water for as long as that exam lasted. I couldn’t be responsible for keeping myself in a position where I felt the tears well before I even knew the outcome.

My next journey would surely be a tear-free one.

Yes, it happened.

It would be nearly a year later before I took another test. This time, one that would secure me a new job, exciting! I got the job, though this exam ended in the same kind of gut-wrenching flood of tears for the whole of New York City to witness on my walk home. The biggest dichotomy being, I passed. I was surrounded by soon-to-be colleagues who expressed their faith in me, and was (for the first time in years) testing into something I was excited at the prospect of pursuing. Yet, my deer-in-the-headlights reaction resulting in a laughable amount of terror was unwaveringly… the same.

Any reasonable person could determine that this is a classic form of test anxiety. However, I see this as a genuine fear of not just judgment, but the fear of my “fate” being determined by my ability to perform a certain set of tasks despite the passion I have for completing them. I am happy in my new job. Calculus, however, effectively allowed me to determine that I was not suited for a career in neurobiology.

I think I may have overlooked the extent to which I want to know what I am destined for. I don’t know the answer, but I tangentially don’t want to be fit into a life jacket two sizes too small and told to swim a mile. I don’t want academic validation if it comes with a trajectory that sends me into a life with little passion. So much of what I hope for myself and the decisions I’ve made thus far have been due to a ridiculous amount of steadfastness. In which case, I need to learn to stay afloat.

Maybe it is a luxury not to know. To feel existentialism in all of its glory, instead of choosing what feels comfortable. I now have the opportunity to choose, in spite of how lost it makes me feel. I get to take far too much time smelling new candles, browsing through art at junk stores, and flipping through hangers. I get to take new classes, write new stories, and take note of the things that I notice myself having a passion for. If that isn’t a true splendor, I don’t know what is.

By placing myself into a life that eliminated every ounce of identity I once had, I am fearful that I opened doors to conversations that are worth having. Let me rephrase: exams that are worth taking. I don’t have to be chronically angry each time I don’t perform to the extent I wish, for I have the privilege of choosing. Choosing to pursue the creative field of journalism that I discovered through my failure (of McLaurin series), choosing to switch jobs, and choosing not to know. I still cannot tell if this will ever bring me as much peace as I hope it does, but I am making a conscious choice to no longer drown under the pressure of expectations that I have created for myself. I know for a fact that I am capable of creating a beautiful life for myself, and for now, tears will flow, but that knowledge is the only life jacket I need.

With love always,

Olivia Jean