The title of this blog has changed recently, as previous visitors might notice. I have been trying to decide on a direction for some time, and wanted it to be something close to the thing most important to me, namely mathematics. More than that, I want it to be about my mathematics. Not just technical exposition, although there will be some of that as well, but about my struggle to try to become a good mathematician, whatever that means.

The blog will therefore be of a somewhat mixed nature. Some of the posts will be more personal, and may not always be of interest to someone interested in something mathematical. But I suspect there are quite a few people out there in similar positions to mine, and may benefit from knowing that the struggle is a shared one. This is not limited to mathematicians, but to scientists and academics in general. Especially, this may help some of those new to the business to at least avoid some of the mistakes I have made…

In addition, there will be purely mathematical entries. I have discovered (at a late stage, it must be said) that to understand something I have to write about it. I think I have avoided doing so more because writing mathematical documents is not easy. Yet one cannot be said to understand a topic to a reasonable degree unless one can convey it in writing. Lecturing is also good, but one usually doesn’t have the leisure to lecture on everything you want to understand, and it does not leave a permanent record to consult at a later stage. Writing a blog on the subject is a good compromise, since one has to make the material presentable to an audience, who could (at best) offer insight and correction and (at worst) savage your lack of understanding.

I make no claims of originality here. Much of what I write will have been stated by others. For instance, Terry Tao has a blog post from years ago that pretty much gives the exact advice of the previous paragraph. He has a great page of career advice at https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/, which should be read. All I can offer here is offer my own take on things.

This all sound quite serious, which will hopefully not be the dominant tone of this blog. One piece of advice for budding mathematicians would be not to take yourself too seriously. I have to keep reminding myself of this. Mathematics should be fun, and if it is not, find yourself another job. I tend to fall into a deep depression and blame myself endlessly when a solution I have been working on for months turns out to have a trivial counterexample. The answer is to get away from the problem, take a walk in a park, and realise that you are not a failure as a human being because of this. Sure, not every minute of mathematics will be pleasant, but if you can’t periodically remind yourself that you are doing this because you like it, you will suffer under a great psychological burden.

Thus, if I post something which seems silly, realise that this is just me reminding myself to lighten the hell up.