In the midst of an intense Calc II assignment, I hear the words “soulless” and “math” brought up in a conversation in the dorm. My friend, who is a humanities major, is talking about what drove him away from the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields: the cold, lonely, mechanical world of numbers. I shyly sink my face into my math homework, and pretend not to listen, all while denying to myself that I do not feel the same way.
Out of the many subjects that interest me in school, some that are very interesting are math, physics, computer science, art, and sociology. One of the things that I’ve never really felt comfortable with is the idea of me sitting in front of a computer on a day-to-day basis, or spending more time with my calculator than I do with my mother, or growing attached to numbers and detached from people. In my head, “STEM” and anything involving human contact or spiritual significance could not be used in the same sentence. I considered math, physics, and computer science interesting, but completely separate from my spiritual life. Wanting to work directly with people, in some sort of social work perhaps, I also was not happy with the idea of spending more time with technology and numbers than I did with human contact. This has been my dilemma since I first realized I was interested in STEM.
Fast forward a couple days. I am sitting in a small auditorium, listening to a math professor from a neighboring school talk about God in mathematics. God, in mathematics. Not only were these words being used together in the same sentences, they were being described as being the same thing! Among the many interesting points that were made, she talked about how math is not a man-made concept, but rather it is a gift given to humans by something greater than humans. The whole basis of math is people trying to discover the internal workings and the structure of the world, not creating them.
For anyone who is hesitant to go into STEM, I encourage you not to be discouraged by the type of thinking I had had for year. I have yet to decide whether I want to focus on STEM or the humanities, or perhaps do both, but this idea that there is much more to STEM fields than logic and numbers, is pretty darn cool.
