I developed severe social anxiety from malnutrition which lead to underperformance throughout childhood up until graduate school where the pressures of study/teaching finally collapsed on top of me and shed the ego-driven persona I had developed to cope with my overpreparedness. I eventually dropped my program to recover, and I’m here to try again now.

There is of course the psychological damage from growing up with an alcoholic mother and losing my father to gun violence forcing my mom to jump from inappropriate relationship to inappropriate relationships, forgoing her children’s needs in a desperate attempt to outrun her own mental trauma, but I’d rather not talk about that. I’d like to say that I did pretty well considering the circumstances; I only hope that you, dear reader, can see it too.

As for the other 115 words I have to say about this subject, I developed a plethora of psychosomatic health issues ranging from atopic dermatitis to insulin-resistant bipolar disorder, which I am treating with a ketogenic diet, and this so-called suffering is how I managed to learn as much medical terminology and applied psychology that I know now. This is precisely why I believe the Applied Mathematics program is a better fit for me, whereas in my previous graduate students, I mistakenly applied for the Pure Mathematics program. However! My lessons in Differential Topology will be precisely what we need to alleviate the diagnostic discrepancy between some of the ailments I was unfortunately misdiagnosed with. Let’s hope 🙂