Codependent Collegian

By Tre Jermain, FSU engineering major

My first go-around with my required differential equations course was highly unsuccessful. Straight up? I flunked that shit; no other way to say it. I fell behind about Week One and I never recovered, and by November of last fall I was completely fucked up trying to differentiate between linear equations, nonlinear equations, and even my own phone number.

But this semester is different, my friend. This is the year that I make differential equations my own personal bitch.

You see, I'm taking a new approach to Diffy-Q, as the graduate assistants call it. Before you can make differential equations your bitch, you must have a good, positive self-image, so the math will find you attractive.

You must take your differential equations into another world, a really special world where only the two of you exist, a romantic world, a poetic world. Sometimes this happens automatically with students and mathematical equations: if you've ever fallen in love, you remember what it's like to feel like you are the only two people who've ever existed. Other times, you have to create the mood: some soft music, a nice bottle of wine, and your Heweltt Packard 11C engineering calculator.

That's how it's going to be with me and differential equations this time.

And listen: never take your differential equations to the same place you'd go with your homies if you want to really understand this math. Take your equations someplace out of the ordinary, like a river front cafe in a nearby small town, a walk in the woods where you've previously and secretly stashed a bottle of champagne, two glasses and a blanket. That will make differential equations feel very special, and not like some cheap geometry proof that you picked up at the bar.

One me and differential equations get it right, the world ain't never going to be the same, you hear?

Labels: differential equations, Florida State University

Left: A sample of the lethal linear first-order differential equations

(State College, PA) Penn State sophomore Grant Bradley passed away due to complications from the advanced mathematics course Differential Equations on January 28. He was 19.

Friends and family will gather to remember Bradley's life at a memorial service on Jan. 31, and an on-campus vigil is still being planned for the PSU community to gather in remembering the would-be engineer.

Bradley, who grew up with mathematical disabilities that put him at a disadvantage with other students, was not expected to progress past high school geometry, according to his mother, Judy Bradley.

"Boy, he sure did show the doubters a thing or two," she said. "Bradley never wanted to be treated as the 'LD student' or the 'math retard.' He was lucky to have friends that didn't see him as any different than themselves. But when he tried to do those differential equations, his brain just quit."

Left: A tutor tries for the umpteenth time to get it through Bradley's thick skull that it is impossible to directly find the slope of the tangent line to a given function

Bradley's roommate, Penn State sophomore Lee Byung, said he greatly admired the struggling math student.

"He never whined about his mathematics handicap, and instead looked toward everything with a positive outlook," Byung said. "Everyone who took the time to know him will tell you that Bradley had an aura of serenity, despite a complete inability to grasp symmetries and invariants, especially when the derivative of the unknown function at a certain time is given in terms of the values of the function at previous times."

Another roommate, Penn State sophomore J.D. Blanchard, echoed Byung's description of Bradley.

"Grant was an awesome individual, and I think we can all learn something from his life," Hicks said. "He always remained remarkably determined and optimistic about life, despite being a total spazz at math. I think that is very commendable because most of us would not be able to handle half of the adversity that Grant dealt with in his everyday life, especially using the Fokker-Planck equation to determine the time evolution of the probability density function of position and velocity of a particle. Grant really sucked at that, the dumb bastard."

Labels: differential equations, Math, Penn State