I’m a math and computer science major.
I just finished my freshman year, but I have senior standing (93 credit hours) because I took university classes full-time during my senior year of high school. I’ve taken two computer science classes and fourteen math classes, including every required class other than complex analysis.
It’s hard to explain why math appeals to me, but I guess it’s because I feel really happy after I’ve solved a math problem. I like puzzles, but I don’t like lab equipment or empirical data. Math is beautiful because all you need is your mind.
I didn’t have a strong opinion about math until my sophomore year of high school, when I took plane geometry and honors Algebra II. The teacher had a strategy where he gave us worksheets full of problems and let us try to solve them on our own before he taught any lessons about the concepts behind them.
Everyone else complained, but I always got really excited about these worksheets. I went home and stayed up late doing the problems, and every day I presented a bunch of my solutions in class. :-B Whenever my classmates didn’t understand something, I explained it to them. The teacher saw that I was advanced, so he gave me a graphing calculator and two calculus textbooks and said I could study from those or other math books during his class.
By the end of my junior year, I had tested out of my school’s pre-calculus and calculus classes. I took the AP Calculus BC exam, which allowed me to take six higher-level university classes in my senior year. At that point, I couldn’t imagine not majoring in math.
I want to get a Ph.D. in math, but I probably won’t become a professor because it’s too competitive. I need a lot of backup plans, and this was the motivation for my double major in computer science. I’ve enjoyed my computer science classes because the kind of thinking required isn’t very different from the thinking required in mathematics. My ability to write proofs has often helped me with programming, and my (limited) knowledge of programming has helped me with MATLAB-based assignments in my applied math classes.
When I took my first programming class, I worried that I was “selling out.” I don’t feel like that anymore because I’ve realized that math and computer science complement each other. Exposure to both fields will help you get jobs in either one.
I want to triple major with philosophy, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to fit the classes into my schedule when there are so many other electives I want to take. 