The Lost COVID Journals
a rewriting of my journal entries (3/30-5/4 2020) into a single narrative
It is with a languor both weary and indulgent that I take up my pen, or rather, summon forth the delicate rhythm of keystrokes upon this modern instrument, to trace the slow, inexorable passage of days, each slipping from my grasp like sand through a frail, inattentive hand. If, as I suspect, our memory is but a fabric woven from the finest strands of impression and forgetfulness, then let me stitch into this journal the shape of these days before they dissolve entirely, leaving behind only the vague sensation of confinement, of an immutable suspension in time.
Was it truly on the twelfth of March, 2020, that I last walked within the narrow corridors of school, that temple of instruction whose presence, I confess, I had never cherished until it was taken from me? The mind plays such tricks—so often I think I recall with certainty, only to find that my conviction is a house of air, vanishing at the lightest touch. Yet, if I reconstruct the sequence, I see myself there: the Friday that followed was granted as a reprieve, a teacher’s workday, an idle pause before the great upheaval. Then, in the space of that weekend, it was declared—this great nation, in its slow and ponderous wisdom, would shut itself away, surrendering to the dictates of science and prudence, or, if one is inclined to more cynical interpretations, to the blind panic that, in moments of crisis, so often wears the mask of reason.
Thus, I found myself inhabiting a new reality, one in which education was no longer an act of presence but a mere correspondence, mediated through the cold and indifferent glow of a screen. If I am to speak honestly, I must admit that I miss it—that which I had once deemed unremarkable, even tiresome: the clatter of voices in hallways, the subtle irritations and fleeting amusements that filled the interstices of a school day, the sense, however illusory, of being part of something greater than oneself. I even find myself longing for my teachers, whose presence had once been a mere fact of my existence but whom I now, in their absence, endow with a nobility they perhaps never possessed. And of course, my friends—those figures whose laughter, whose trivial yet essential companionship, had lent texture to my days. Without them, school is not school; it is a mere transmission of information, as lifeless as an echo in an empty room.
And now, the horizon stretches ever farther away. Our exile has been extended to the final days of April, that cruelest of months in which spring unfurls its beauty in defiance of our confinement. I hear the words of Dr. Fauci—who, in this storm of conflicting voices, emerges as the lone figure of unwavering reason—and I know what I have already suspected in the depths of my being: this will not end soon. And yet, history, that vast and indifferent witness, reminds me that we have endured before. The great plague of 1918 did not destroy the world; we emerged, chastened but unbroken. And so, I do not fear for myself, though I do, at times, feel the tremor of unease for those whom I love, for those who inhabit the distant streets of New York, where the invisible enemy moves most freely. But what can I do? I consign my worries to fate, to the hands of those whose knowledge is greater than mine, and I wait, as all the world waits.
And what of today, the nineteenth in this slow accumulation of days? It is a strange thing to remark upon a day as unremarkable, and yet that is the truth of it. The virus advances, indifferent to the rhythms of our lives, yet politics, that ceaseless theater of human ambition, has offered little spectacle beyond the grim predictability of failure. I listen to Governor Cuomo, whose voice has become, in its way, another fixture of this strange new world. He speaks of numbers, of hospitals, of plans and hesitations. And then there is his brother, Chris, who has fallen to the very illness he reports upon. It is a moment of irony, though not one to be laughed at—rather, it is the kind of cruel symmetry that life so often provides.
April arrives, and with it, news that does not shock but still has the power to wound. The schools of Georgia will not reopen; my final days of high school, which I had once imagined filled with ceremony and small but significant triumphs, have already passed unnoticed. I will not stand upon a stage, will not grasp that symbol of completion, will not feel the weight of my own passage into the next stage of life in the way that others before me have. And yet, is this not always the nature of endings? We anticipate them, prepare for them, envision them in precise detail—only to find, when they arrive, that they have already passed us by, without fanfare, without pause, without recognition.
But what can one do except continue, as we all must, through this great uncertainty? I will write, as I have written today, not because my words will alter the world but because they may, at the very least, preserve a trace of what it was to live in this moment, to drift through these endless, immutable days. And perhaps, in years to come, when time has softened the sharp edges of the present, I will look back upon these pages and find within them the person I was—the person I am, in this suspended moment of history.
The hours pass, as they always do, with that slow yet relentless cadence by which time asserts its dominion over all things. And yet, in this strange sequestration, in this life stripped of movement and interruption, time no longer rushes forward but rather accumulates, a sedimentary layering of identical days, each indistinguishable from the next. I wake, I listen, I watch, and I wait, as does the rest of the world, suspended in this great, disquieting pause.
It is with a kind of dull resignation that I observe the numbers climb—the inexorable tally of affliction and loss. One might have hoped, at least, that such a crisis would summon from the depths of human frailty an answering surge of wisdom, that those entrusted with governance would bow before the simple dictates of reason. And yet, how disappointing to find that folly remains irrepressible, even in the face of disaster. What can be said of those who, with a blithe and indifferent hand, sign decrees that turn places of worship into contagion mills, as though faith could serve as an impenetrable shield against the workings of nature? There is, however, one small consolation amid the din of ignorance: Dr. Fauci, that solitary beacon of intelligence, who, against the rising tide of error, continues to wield the weapon of reason. He is the emblem of that rarest of virtues—clarity—and in this muddled age, clarity is indistinguishable from hope.
And so, I press on, not because there is much to do, but because the sheer repetition of days demands some small effort to delineate one from another. At least, for the moment, school has receded, granting me a brief interlude in which the mind may wander more freely. How strange, though, that freedom should feel so constrained! I had not thought myself sentimental, nor particularly attached to the rituals of a classroom, but now, deprived of its presence, I begin to discern what before I had taken for granted. It is not learning itself that has altered, but rather its setting; knowledge, without the faint hum of voices, the shuffle of papers, the sudden illumination of understanding shared between students and teachers, feels thin, weightless, as though robbed of its substance.
And yet, I must admit, the forced solitude has brought its own discoveries. My mechanical studies—how sweet it is to labor upon something so concrete, to bend one’s will upon a problem that, unlike the present chaos, yields at last to method and reason. How satisfying, after days of grappling, to arrive at that moment of clarity when the puzzle dissolves, when the concept that once resisted comprehension suddenly lays itself bare. It is a curious thing, this pleasure in abstraction, this delight in the simple precision of force and equilibrium, as though, in the cold and inalterable laws of physics, I might find a counterweight to the shapeless uncertainty that surrounds me.
And now, with the capriciousness that so often seizes the idle mind, I have resolved upon a new endeavor—Russian numerals. Why? Who can say? Perhaps it is that old longing for a world beyond one’s own, that desire, even in confinement, to reach beyond the walls of the familiar. Or perhaps it is merely the satisfaction of imposing order upon the arbitrary, of conquering the unknown with the simple elegance of sequence and structure. In any case, I shall learn to count in Russian, and in doing so, I shall convince myself, if only for an instant, that I am not merely waiting, not merely drifting, but rather forging, however subtly, however imperceptibly, a path through these days of repetition and silence.
And so, the world remains as it was yesterday, and as it will be tomorrow. The virus spreads, the leaders falter, the doctors labor in their weary heroism, and I, in my own small way, persist. I do not know when the world will resume its motion, nor what shape it will take when at last it does. But for now, there is nothing to do but endure—endure, and count, and wait for the moment when time, at last, begins again.
The days pass in a curious succession, neither swift nor slow, but rather with that peculiar elasticity which time assumes when one is neither wholly occupied nor entirely idle. And yet, in the midst of this confinement, I have discovered the pleasure of imposing structure upon the shapelessness of hours: I count, I calculate, I analyze. Russian numerals, for instance, have proved to be a more agreeable diversion than I might have anticipated. There is something deeply satisfying in their logic, in the manner in which they unfold, step by step, mirroring the numerical systems I have always known yet possessing their own peculiar cadence. From zero to one hundred and ninety-nine, I have now mastered them, and tomorrow, I shall press forward to one thousand.
But my true delight, my most intimate solace, remains in the rigors of mechanical engineering. Chapter three stands before me, its problems waiting to be untangled, and I take a certain pride in having fortified my understanding of all that came before. There is a pleasure, not unlike that of revisiting a well-loved passage in a book, in retracing one’s steps, in confirming that what was once difficult is now clear. And yet, how exacting these concepts can be! The subtleties of force and moment, the necessity of deconstructing vectors when their alignment with the coordinate plane is imperfect—these are the quiet battles of my days. How strange, then, that such abstractions should feel more real, more substantial, than the world outside, which continues to lurch unpredictably forward in its crisis.
And today, I am reminded that, for all my efforts at intellectual diversion, the body is an obstinate thing. A pinched nerve, sharp and persistent, sends a searing pain through my shoulder, a cruel impediment to my usual studies. It is absurd, really, how much one takes for granted the simple ability to move freely, to turn one’s head without wincing. I recall an earlier episode of this affliction, years ago, in childhood, though I had almost forgotten it until now. Pain, it seems, is a faithful archivist, preserving its records in the recesses of memory, only to retrieve them when least expected. Unable to work as I would like, I listen instead—to Fauci, to the measured cadence of his voice as he speaks of what is to come. The death toll, the trajectory of the virus, the uncertainties that still loom. I find a certain comfort in his presence, a voice of reason in a world that often seems bereft of it.
The unexpected interlude of a call from my cousin momentarily lifts me from my usual preoccupations. It is strange, is it not, how in such times of separation, one finds oneself reaching, even unconsciously, for those connections that had been neglected in the past? We speak, though I cannot quite recall what about—quarantine, perhaps, or old times, or nothing in particular. And then he is gone again, occupied with a new game, the remake of Final Fantasy VII. I find it vaguely amusing that even now, in an age when the world itself seems to have stalled, the machinery of entertainment presses ever forward, producing new diversions for those who seek them.
And so, I return to my studies. The problem before me is a formidable one, a three-force body with no angles provided, a challenge that refuses to yield to my usual methods. It is a peculiar sensation, this simultaneous frustration and exhilaration that comes from grappling with a problem that resists immediate resolution. I despise geometry for its seeming arbitrariness, and yet I know that within its rules, however opaque they may seem, lies the key to understanding. I will not abandon this problem, not yet. It will remain with me, nagging at the edges of my thoughts, until at last I conquer it.
The day stretches on, and I find myself moving through its rhythm almost unconsciously. There is an evening spent in physical exertion, an ab workout that leaves me momentarily exhausted, followed by a return to my mechanical studies, only to be interrupted by a long stretch of domestic labor. Cleaning, then dinner, then the company of guests—a rarity in these times, though one that is strangely welcome. And then, the small pleasure of an old game revived: ping pong, a contest waged with both the husband and the wife. The rust of disuse makes itself known, and I lose my first match, but soon enough, I recover, besting my second opponent. There is something reassuring about the simple, familiar mechanics of the game—the quick reflex, the precise angle, the satisfying sound of the ball as it strikes the paddle. It is a reminder that, even now, some things remain unchanged.
The next day unfolds more quietly. A sense of lassitude creeps in, as it sometimes does, a mild fatigue that dulls even the pleasures of study. I complete my unit review, but without the usual fervor, as though some invisible weight presses upon me. And yet, in this stillness, I find a certain peace. The pages of my codex—those yellow legal pads, thickening with each passing day—are a tangible record of my efforts, proof that, for all the monotony of quarantine, something has been built. It is strange how quickly I have adapted to this habit of writing, how easily the words now flow. A day of little consequence, yet not an unwelcome one.
And then, the resumption of school—if one can still call it that, when all learning takes place within the confines of my own room. There is a novelty, almost a pleasure, in encountering new concepts from the comfort of one’s own space. I find myself drawn ever deeper into the ideas of Robert Solow, discovering in his work a fascination that rivals even my admiration for Harold Brown. And beyond my studies, the world outside continues its uneven progression: New York, perhaps, reaching the apex of its infection curve, though Fauci, ever the voice of prudence, urges patience before drawing conclusions.
And then, the peculiar drama of politics intrudes even into this quiet enclave of thought. A headline, almost absurd in its implications: Trump, it seems, is considering dismissing Fauci. A ridiculous notion, refuted almost as soon as it appears, yet symptomatic of the chaos that lingers in the higher echelons of power. It is a strange thing, to feel simultaneously detached from and entangled in the affairs of the world, to exist in this suspended state where life, though altered, has not ceased.
And so, the days continue. I learn, I struggle, I wait. The virus rages on, but here, within these walls, I remain, watching, thinking, recording—until such time as the world begins again.
The day unfolds with a certain clarity, a brightness that is not merely the product of the weather, though the air is indeed crisp and agreeable, but also of a mood, a disposition inclined toward optimism. There is something curiously reassuring about the simple act of breakfast, the satisfaction of being neither hungry nor preoccupied with the thought of hunger. It is, perhaps, the small rituals—this meal, this routine of study and exercise—that lend a semblance of structure to the amorphousness of time in quarantine.
Returning to the obligations of online schooling has proved, to my mild surprise, to be more pleasant than I had anticipated. The work itself, unchallenging, yields easily to my efforts, and I find a certain satisfaction in its completion. That I am now unburdened from any further obligations in AP Government is a revelation I continue to savor, as one does an unexpected reprieve from duty. Meanwhile, I have resumed my exercise regimen with a renewed sense of purpose, as though the missed days—Saturday, Sunday, Monday—demanded atonement, a physical reckoning. There is something almost mechanical in the repetition of sit-ups and push-ups, yet in their repetition, there is also the assurance of progress. I am confident that by May 1st, the familiar contours of my abdominal muscles will have returned, a physical manifestation of discipline and persistence. And in writing, too, I persist. The page, once daunting in its emptiness, now fills with ease, and I am amused to find that I have once again completed it. HAHAHA.
Yet the following day dawns with a more tedious character. The unwelcome discovery of unanticipated schoolwork—work I had neither expected nor desired—renders the morning one of reluctant diligence. The tasks set before me are of that peculiarly exasperating nature: neither particularly difficult nor particularly enlightening, merely tiresome. And yet, in the midst of this drudgery, there is knowledge to be gleaned. I find myself tracing the rudiments of mechanics, a subject which, in its academic form, seems almost laughably elementary compared to the more intricate engineering problems I pursue in my own time. The contrast is striking—at school, I am made to trudge through the basics, while in my solitude, I revel in the complexities of rigid equilibrium systems and three-force body problems. Moments, I have come to realize, are the silent architects of these solutions. Given the summation of forces along the x- and y-axes, there will always be some unknown demanding resolution, and the moment equation, applied correctly, will unfailingly reveal it. From that point, the rest is merely algebra, a process as inevitable as the turning of the days themselves.
Yet the discipline of the body falters where that of the mind does not. I have neglected my ab workouts once again, and the knowledge of this omission weighs upon me with an almost absurd sense of guilt. There is no real consequence, of course, save for the additional exertion now required of me—fourteen uninterrupted minutes of exercise, an act of penance for my prior negligence. It is a ritual, one I have observed each April for the past two years, and each time, it yields the same result: by the month’s end, the familiar form of a six-pack emerges, as though summoned by sheer will. And yet, as I write, I find myself momentarily bereft of thought, my mind wandering aimlessly, seeking substance where none presents itself. No matter. The exercise awaits, and with it, the sense of purpose it reliably restores.
By the afternoon of the next day, I have oriented myself toward efficiency. There are matters to attend to—emails to be sent, discussions to be had regarding grades, those curious metrics by which one’s efforts are measured. I take stock of my standing in Algebra 2 and Physical Science, recalling the assignments for which I have been unfairly marked absent. The arithmetic of academic bureaucracy is its own kind of problem-solving: the identification of discrepancies, the negotiation of corrections. In Algebra 2, the zeros entered for Unit 4’s assignments—remnants of a period of frequent absences—must be addressed. In Physical Science, a similar predicament arises: a worksheet on simple machines, a vocabulary quiz, all marked incomplete despite my having done the work. The solution, I suspect, will not require anything so rigorous as the application of moment equations, but rather the far simpler art of persuasion.
The following day carries with it the satisfaction of completion. My sister, overwhelmed by a month’s worth of accumulated work, has been guided toward order, and I myself have crossed a threshold in my own studies. Unit 3 of mechanical engineering is now behind me, its subject—equilibrium bodies—mastered, and ahead lies Unit 4, a topic of even greater promise: center of gravity. This, at last, is where calculus makes its entrance, where the abstract elegance of differentiation and integration merges with the physical world. The prospect is thrilling, for calculus is, in many ways, the language of engineering, the means by which complex realities are rendered comprehensible. Yet I am aware of my own deficiencies—skills dulled by time, concepts once grasped now slipping from memory. It has been months since I last immersed myself in calculus, months since that peculiar joy of discovery first took hold of me in the quiet days of December. But no matter. I will recover what was lost.
And yet, as the next day arrives, I find myself hesitating at the threshold of Unit 4. The calculus required is not yet at my command, and so I must turn back, retracing my steps to the fundamentals. There is something almost pleasurable in this act of re-learning, this reacquaintance with the rules that once seemed so revelatory. The power rule, the quotient rule, the product rule—each one a tool, each one a key to unlocking the greater complexities ahead. I move through them methodically: limits, trigonometric derivatives, logarithmic differentiation. But there is more to recover, more to be drawn from the well of memory, and tomorrow will demand a deeper descent.
Alas, the best-laid plans do not always come to fruition. The weight of schoolwork, unexpectedly heavy, prevents my return to calculus the next day, though I console myself with the knowledge that at least the obligations of the week have been dispatched in a single stroke. This is, perhaps, the one advantage of online schooling—its structure permits a kind of strategic efficiency. The work assigned for the entire week, intended to be approached gradually, is instead consumed in a single day’s labor, leaving the remainder of the week unburdened. And so, though I did not spend the day in the pursuit of derivatives and integrals as I had wished, I am at least unshackled from scholastic demands.
And then, as I write, a sudden announcement, a punctuation to the day’s events: I have received a perfect score on my economics test. The subject—money, banks, the intricate dance of government and the Federal Reserve—had occupied my thoughts only briefly, yet the result is gratifying. The world beyond these walls remains uncertain, a place of shifting figures and predictions, but within this small sphere, within these pages, there is a quiet certainty: that the mind, when disciplined, will yield its own rewards.
The day, from its earliest hours, unfolded with a peculiar sense of vexation, an irritation that, though difficult to define in any precise terms, pervaded every small undertaking. There was a certain sluggishness to my efforts, a resistance in the mind that made the usual rhythm of study feel disjointed, ineffective. Though I had resolved to immerse myself in calculus, the day passed with little progress on that front, and yet I consoled myself with the certainty that tomorrow, unencumbered by distraction, would belong wholly to that pursuit. Instead, my mind turned toward the subtler intricacies of algebra, drawn into the labyrinthine pleasures of factoring, a task that at first seemed menial but soon revealed itself to be, as so often happens in mathematics, an unexpected intellectual amusement. Quadratic equations, their solutions spiraling into the realm of the imaginary, led me further still—into the quiet satisfaction of dissecting polynomials of higher degrees, where at first glance, complexity seemed insurmountable, but upon closer inspection, a hidden symmetry emerged, an ever-present greatest common factor waiting to be drawn forth like a secret long concealed beneath the surface of an equation.
And then, as though the mind, having been momentarily diverted, had reawakened with new vitality, the following day arrived as an exultation of thought, a resurgence of that particular joy that comes with the rediscovery of a long-neglected passion. The pages of my notebook filled with calculations, symbols arranged in their delicate interplay, and at every turn, there was the thrilling recognition of familiarity, as though meeting an old friend after a prolonged absence. Calculus, once second nature, had in its dormancy lost none of its charm, and in these past two days, I had reclaimed it with the eagerness of one who realizes the depth of an affection only after it has been momentarily lost. The rules, which had once seemed abstract, now unfolded with a clarity that was almost intuitive—derivatives of logarithms and natural logs, the precise elegance of implicit and logarithmic differentiation, the interwoven mechanisms of the power, product, quotient, and chain rules. Each problem, at first a challenge, soon became an exercise in recognition, the mind learning once more to see the necessary steps at a glance. Yet there remained those problems whose solutions eluded immediate understanding, whose intricacies demanded patience, practice, and that slow accumulation of experience by which the mathematician comes to see, at last, the hidden structure within what once seemed opaque.
With the morning’s light, a confidence had settled upon me—a sense of mastery over the foundations of derivatives, of having taken the various rules and subjected them to such rigorous application that they were no longer rules to be memorized but rather instincts, movements of the mind as natural as breath. The chain rule, the product rule, the quotient rule—each had, in turn, been reduced to something so fundamental that the very shape of a problem seemed, upon sight, to suggest its own unraveling. This was the pleasure of mathematics: not merely the solving of problems but the ability to see through them, to perceive in the tangle of symbols the clear and inevitable path toward resolution. And yet, I found myself amused by my own misordering of things, for integration should have preceded differentiation, as the former provides the foundation upon which the latter rests. No matter. The path I had taken, though unconventional, had led me here all the same. Integration awaited me on the morrow, and with it, the satisfaction of delving into the very principles upon which my mechanical engineering studies would soon rely—the determination of centroids, the precise localization of an object’s center of gravity. Always, there is this marriage of the abstract and the real, the mathematical and the physical; it is the engineer’s greatest delight.
The first steps into integration were cautious, deliberate. If differentiation had come back to me with the ease of an old language recalled in conversation, integration was a script whose lines I had yet to rehearse with fluency. The rules were familiar in their opposition to those of differentiation, and yet, working through them, I could not help but admire the symmetry of it all. That the power rule of differentiation should find its inverse in the integral, that the same fundamental principle could, with but a shift in perspective, be reinterpreted entirely—there was something almost poetic in this duality. The constant could be drawn from the integrand, the sum of separate terms could be understood as the sum of their individual integrals—these were, at their core, simple truths, and yet their implications were vast, their applications infinite. The work, however, was slow, for each integral, though familiar, required a patience distinct from that of differentiation; where derivatives cut through functions with precision, integration required a more careful unraveling, an attentiveness to the whole.
And then, as though the very fabric of routine had momentarily unraveled, my internet failed, leaving me suspended in that strange liminality where, disconnected from the unending flow of information, one is forced into reflection. It was not an unwelcome disruption; indeed, it provided a rare moment to pause, to consider not only the work I had done but the very nature of the work itself. In this silence, I thought of how the integral, in its essence, was an act of summation, of gathering the infinitesimal into a comprehensible whole. There was something profoundly beautiful in that—an echo of the way experience itself accumulates, imperceptibly, until one finds oneself in possession of understanding that, though once fragmented, has become whole.
The arrival of my whiteboard, a long-anticipated acquisition, transformed the day into something of an event. It was, in its sheer size—six feet wide, nearly covering the entirety of my wall—more imposing than I had imagined, and yet, once in place, it seemed only natural that it should be there, as though the room had been waiting for it all along. The satisfaction of first setting chalk to surface, of marking the pristine expanse with calculations, was immense. As the hours passed, the board filled with the ever-growing latticework of integrals, their solutions unfolding in the ordered procession of mathematical reasoning. And beside it, my second board, designated for formulas alone, became a monument to precision, an ever-expanding repository of the essential equations that guided my work. There was, in this process, a profound sense of fulfillment—not merely in the solving of problems but in the act of constructing a space wholly dedicated to thought, to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
By the following day, the whiteboard stood filled, a testament to the labor and joy of practice. The act of solving integrals had ceased to be mere study and had become instead an engagement with the very fabric of reality, for what is calculus if not the means by which we describe the world? In every equation, in every differential or integral, there was a direct line to something tangible—the trajectory of a falling object, the motion of a pendulum, the forces shaping the universe itself. The elegance of this realization was inescapable: that mathematics, often dismissed as an abstraction, was in truth the language in which nature speaks.
And so, as I contemplated the differential equations that described the spread of disease—this very disease that had confined us all within our homes—I could not help but marvel at the way in which numbers, arranged in their proper sequence, could render the invisible visible, could transform chaos into something knowable. Richard Feynman, whose philosophy I have long admired, spoke often of the necessity of seeking simplicity within complexity, of finding, within the apparent disorder of the world, the fundamental truths that govern it. And as I stood before my whiteboard, the equations arrayed before me in their precise formation, I understood, in a way that was at once deeply intellectual and profoundly personal, that mathematics is not merely a tool but a vision—a means of seeing, with absolute clarity, the hidden order beneath all things.
The day, from its very first stirrings, carried with it an air of weary inevitability, as though the weight of obligations, long foreseen but no less unwelcome, had settled upon me before I had even risen from bed. The burden of schoolwork pressed heavily, its demands multiplying with a finality that seemed almost punitive—two final assignments, like the closing act of a play whose conclusion one had no power to alter. One, a literary exercise of modernization, required that I take Beowulf, that relic of Anglo-Saxon heroism, and clothe it in the garments of the present age. It was a tale of blood and valor, rich with the poetry of its time, and yet, for all its grandeur, I could not help but feel dissatisfied with its end, for what is a hero if not one who endures beyond the moment of triumph? And yet, this was not the only task set before me, for there was, too, the matter of Physical Science—a project of an almost childlike simplicity, an A-to-Z book upon any topic of our choosing, a task that felt trivial in its design, and yet no less obligatory for that. The mind, yearning for the rigorous pleasures of calculus, rebelled at these lesser labors, but rebellion was futile; duty must be performed. Still, I consoled myself with the knowledge that soon, soon enough, these distractions would be behind me, and I would return to the realm of integrals and derivatives, where thought flows like a river unimpeded.
When at last I set myself to the task of my British Literature essay, I found in it, to my surprise, a kind of amusement. If the poem Beowulf belonged to an age of swords and monsters, then why not bring it into an era of bureaucracy and polite decorum? I fashioned Beowulf as a medieval history teacher, a man of erudition and quiet authority, and Grendel, that wretched beast, took the form of an incompetent and brutish colleague, whose presence in the school was an affliction to all who sought true learning. Their battle, no longer one of physical might, became instead a struggle within the rigid structures of academia, resolved not with sword and shield, but with the swift and merciless justice of administrative intervention. There was something oddly satisfying in this transformation, a reminder that the conflicts of men, however disguised by time, remain always the same. Yet, even as I laid down my pen, I knew that this was but another task checked off the long ledger of obligations. Tomorrow, the Physical Science project awaited, and with it, a quiz on mortgages and loans—a topic that, though practical, lacked the luster of true intellectual engagement.
If the essay had been an exercise in creativity, the Physical Science project was nothing more than an exercise in patience. Each page, each entry, felt like a minor ordeal, the task stretching far beyond its rightful length, as though time itself had slowed in protest. But I persevered, and when at last it was done, I felt not triumph but mere relief, a sigh of liberation from the tedium of it. Only one more obstacle remained: an Economics test, the final barrier between obligation and freedom. The weight of these final days of school bore down upon me, a sudden and unwelcome intensity, as if the closing of one chapter must necessarily be accompanied by an avalanche of tasks meant to impress upon us the significance of our departure. But beyond this, I could sense the shape of things to come. Soon, high school would be behind me, and I would step forward into something altogether different, something vast and uncertain. The notion of adulthood loomed before me—not in the abstract sense in which I had once considered it, but as a tangible reality. I was on the precipice of it, my eighteenth birthday mere weeks away, college already on the horizon. There was a strange sort of detachment in the process of preparing for it—examinations, transcripts, proof of residency, all the dull formalities of transition. It was, I supposed, a necessity, though I could not help but resent the bureaucracy of it, the way in which a life’s next step could be reduced to forms and documentation.
And then, a moment of trivial yet undeniable satisfaction: a haircut. The shearing away of long, unruly strands brought with it a lightness, a restoration of order to something that had, for too long, been neglected. I preferred it short, neat, arranged with the simple precision that mirrored my own nature. I asked little of the world—only a roof above me, a quiet space in which to think, a steady supply of water, and, above all, mathematics. With these, I could be content. The extravagances of life held little appeal; simplicity, I had found, was the most enduring of luxuries. And yet, my mind, despite its usual methodical nature, found itself wandering that evening, my thoughts unmoored and drifting. I had taken my Economics test, earned a score that was, by all measures, excellent, and yet, I felt nothing particular about it. It was a task completed, nothing more. My real concerns, my true passions, lay elsewhere.
But at last, a pleasure beyond the sterile confines of academia: the arrival of my brother, a rare and welcome intrusion upon the quiet solitude that had defined my days. He had flown from New York to Georgia, bringing with him not merely the presence of family, but the lively exchange of conversation, the small joys of companionship. It was a curious thing, how one could grow accustomed to one’s own company, retreat so fully into the rhythms of study and self-reflection, and then, with a single visit, be reminded of the warmth that exists beyond oneself. We played ping pong, an old rivalry reignited, and though I claimed victory in one round, he reclaimed it in the next. There was a comfort in this, in the ease with which we fell back into familiar patterns. And beyond this, a greater comfort still: the knowledge that school, at last, was drawing to its inevitable close. The final assignments in Physical Science and British Literature had been completed, AP Government required no further effort, and the weight of obligation was, at long last, lifting.
The days now stood before me like the final pages of a book, already written but not yet read. A few more tasks, a handful of lingering requirements, and then, nothing. The end of high school, of structured days and familiar corridors, of lessons learned and friendships formed. I had found much to appreciate in these years, taken from them lessons beyond those inscribed in textbooks. There had been ease in my studies, enjoyment in my classes, camaraderie among those whose company I valued. It had been, in the end, a successful endeavor, a chapter of life well-lived. And now, as the last week of school approached, there remained only the final steps, the last examinations, the closing ceremonies.
And beyond that? Beyond that, there was only the vast and unknowable expanse of the future.
This day, with its hours stretching before me like an expanse of untouched parchment, was one of those rare instances where the mind, unencumbered by the trivialities of obligation, could luxuriate in the purest of pursuits—the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The morning was consumed, as if in a fever, by the engrossing lectures of Michael Van Biezen, whose exposition of calculus unfolded before me like a revelation, each theorem and technique a new avenue through which the infinite might be glimpsed. It was not merely a matter of revisiting the familiar; rather, I found myself led into uncharted territory, discovering for the first time the subtle elegance of min-max problems, those inquiries into the very nature of extremity itself.
How fascinating it was, this intellectual exercise of optimization, in which one seeks to distill from the boundless complexity of reality an equation, a law, a single expression of truth! To take the inchoate mess of a problem, laden with its many constraints, and sculpt from it something precise, something knowable, was a joy unlike any other. One begins with an equation, the fragile skeleton of understanding, and from it, with the careful application of a constraint, removes the extraneous, pares it down to its essential form. Then, like a painter stepping back from his canvas to discern the broader strokes, one takes the derivative—this supreme instrument of change—and sets it equal to zero, as if commanding the flux of the universe itself to pause for a moment of clarity. From this momentary stillness, the answer emerges, a figure in the mist, ready to be placed back into the framework from which it first arose. It is a process of distillation, of purification, and it is, in its own quiet way, a thing of beauty. But beauty alone is never enough for the inquiring mind; the hunger for more, for deeper knowledge, remains insatiable.
And so, as I closed my notes for the day, I knew that my journey was not yet complete. There was still more to uncover, for I had yet to speak of Newton’s method—a method not of idle speculation, but of discovery, of peeling away the unknown layer by layer until one arrives at a truth previously hidden from view. But for today, I would let the thoughts linger, unresolved yet all the more tantalizing for it.
When I resumed my contemplations the following day, I returned to Newton’s method, that remarkable heuristic by which the great man himself, in his ceaseless effort to wrest order from the chaos of numbers, devised a way to approach the roots of functions not by crude approximation, but with precision refined through iteration. There is something almost poetic in the way one selects an arbitrary starting point—x1x_1x1, a mere guess—and from this uncertain foundation, through a process both mechanical and miraculous, arrives at an approximation ever closer to the truth. The method unfolds like a dialogue between the function and its own derivative, as if the very curve of the graph were whispering its secrets to those who knew how to listen. With each step, the approximation grows more certain, the elusive root drawing nearer, until at last it stands revealed—not with the finality of an absolute solution, but with an assurance that, given enough steps, it may become as close to truth as one dares to hope.
How extraordinary it is that what once required the finest minds, hunched over their desks, painstakingly performing these calculations by hand, is now accomplished in an instant, the work of mere moments for a machine. And yet, does this diminish the beauty of the method? No, rather, it renders it more astonishing still, for in contemplating it, one glimpses the mind of Newton himself, perceives the very steps he must have taken, the pathways of thought he must have wandered down, in that age where such revelations were not mere curiosities to be programmed into a machine, but the work of genius itself.
And so, reflecting upon these writings, I cannot help but regard them with a certain mixture of affection and disdain. There is, of course, an undeniable awkwardness in their construction, a youthful exuberance untempered by refinement. Yet within them, I detect the stirring of something more profound, an early awareness of the pleasures of intellectual pursuit, of the quiet satisfaction that comes from grappling with an idea until it at last yields to understanding. It is a strange and marvelous thing, this evolution of thought, imperceptible in the moment yet unmistakable in retrospect.
We do not change so much as we deepen, the contours of our intellect becoming sharper, more defined, much as the young tree, in its first years, is still unmistakably itself, though it will in time grow into something far greater. There is no single instant in which one becomes wise, nor is there a moment where one may say, "I have at last become myself." Rather, it is a process as gradual as the shifting of the tide, the quiet accumulation of knowledge and experience, until one day, without ever noticing the change, we find that we have become something more than we once were.
And thus, the scholar, looking backward, sees in his younger self not a stranger, but a reflection of the path he himself once walked. In every line of clumsy prose, in every unfinished thought, there is the promise of what is yet to come. We begin by imitating, by seeking out models whose words we strive to echo, and in doing so, we unknowingly set forth on the journey of becoming ourselves. And perhaps, when at last we arrive at that distant shore, we will look back and see that, all along, we were already moving in that direction.
End