Sneaky Academic Desire

So, my Abstract Algebra final is a week from yesterday. Actually, a week from today, I will be done with EVERYTHING for this semester. A week from tomorrow, I will be flying back to Pennsylvania. I'm not quite sure why it is that each year, time seems to go faster, but by the time I'm fifty, I can't imagine how it will seem.

So, today, I was starting to think about studying for Abstract and for this final, we're allowed to bring in one piece of  paper (front and back) with notes or other things written on it (this is a first for me at Mills, though it was rather commonplace last year in Germany). So, feeling nostalgic, I picked up the piece of paper tucked in a fancy folder in my bottom drawer where I had written all of my notes for the Stochastics exam last year. Remember when I was in that class? So, my notes looked like this:

 And I was reading over some of them, and as usually happens when I look at old work that I've done in math, I think: "Man.... remember when I could do that? It was so long ago!"And then I start to feel sad, but then - and this is a new thing that has just begun to happen -  I look at the things in those notes that I didn't understand at the time. And they start to look more familiar. And I think - wait. At that time, I just wrote down 'homomorphismus' when they told me to, now I know what a homomorphism is. And - I know what this is, and what that is - I now know what I was probably supposed to know as background for that class, and all that I've forgotten is actually the Stochastics part of it. But this desire comes up that I have felt pretty much every day for the last two months: the desire to take all of the math classes I've ever taken over again, because I would understand them so completely now. Understanding - is a tricky thing. It doesn't always mean the same thing when you talk to two different people. But I know exactly what it feels like when I actually understand something in math. This beautiful clarity, this almost three-dimensional feel of the idea in my head - and I know I didn't have that in many classes that I've taken before. Often, you don't get it until after the class is over. Maybe while you study for the final, you get that clarity for the concepts you did in the first few weeks. But with my mathematical maturity now, why can I go back and take Linear Algebra I, II, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Differential Equations, Lie Theory and P-adic Analysis all over again? You have no idea how much I really want to.

On a different note, take a look at this:

How beautiful is that?

It's fifty and sunny in CA (so about 10 for you Celsius folks), and in PA it's raining. And in Mainz? That beautiful snow over the trains. I can see the Mainz Hbf sign in the background. I miss it like a hole in my heart. Honestly. I'm so glad I get to spend Christmas with my family this year, but - I really did leave part of me in at Pankratiusstr. 28.