In kindergarten I was angered by a second grader who disbelieved I could count to 100. After all it was a simple matter of a repeating pattern . . . why, I could count all the way to infinity if I wanted to. So I decided to do it!
The first night I realized it would take a long time so I kept a piece of paper by my bedside to record the last number I counted before falling asleep. It was a week later when I was still in the ten thousands that I abanonded the idea because I realized it was going to take a lot more time than I wanted to dedicate to it.
But I had a strange "revelation" about numbers at this time. It was a vision of numbers extending in a positive line to a twisted vanishing point where it returned as a negative.
I saw eternity and zero as being equal but opposite and numbers as a giant mobius strip. In between each number was another series of smaller mobius strips. It looked like a giant eternal fractal. I had a fleeting understanding that if I could understand math I would be able to understand the framework of all creation/reality.
Of course it would be a few years before I would know what a mobius strip or a fractal was and high school before I could see the practical application of this model in trig.
Anyway, I would try to talk to the adults in my life about this stuff and get only blank smiles from them.
I think my "vision" (if you can call it that) confused my perception of math because I was never able to accurately compute numbers until college. (Or maybe I suffered from a mild form of dyscalculia).
It was common for teachers to shake their heads and tell me, "I don't get it. You seem to understand the concepts/theory in classroom disscussions why are you always failing the tests? It was a mystery to me why I was never able to get the numbers to add up.
I finally had my mathematical "aha!" moment in an algebra II class in college. My teacher had written this massive problem on the board and told everyone he would award 10 extra points on the next math test to the first person who could solve it.
About 5 or 6 students jumped up and furiously began trying to solve it for about 5 minutes. Suddenly I realized it was nothing more than a giant quadratic equation filled with a crazy amount of numbers that all cancelled out to a an equation that was so simple I could do it in my head!
I walked up to the board and wrote the number 4 to gasps of, "What is she an idiot savant?" And the world of math suddenly became understandable to me!
For the first time I saw that all math was simply reducing a big mess of symbols into easily handled smaller parts. It now became a challenging puzzle to figure out which formula I could use to solve it!
What made this all strange is that I only wanted to be a physicist/astronomer/geologist from the time I was a child. I could not wait to get to college. I was a fan of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and later James Burke's connections.
I was ecstatic at 10 when my father got me a subscription to OMNI magazine and my love for sci-fi blossomed.
It was in an article of OMNI that I first discovered fractals. Which makes an interesting point. I absolutely LOVED geometry and aced it with no problems . . . but algebra and trig were like murder to me.
However, I did not stick with math because I bombed Trig and when I scored low on the math section of my SAT my dad shook his head sadly and told me to reconsider my plans of becoming a scientist . . . besides . . . I would find it difficult as a woman in a technological field where competition was fierce.
I was devastated. My ENTJ Naval Commander and Weapons Engineer/poet/musician the smartest man in the world told me I couldn't be a scientist. And then a few months later, he died.
I was lost. I proceeded to drift for the next few years. I skipped most of my senior year only showing up on test dates. The school finally contacted my emotionally comatose mother and told her I would not graduate because I skipped 37 consecutive days. She came alive in fury and with a threatened lawsuit I graduated with my class after making up an entire sememster of work in one month.
In college I drifted from major to major until I decided to become a teacher (my dad always said that those who can't-- TEACH! LOL) Where I discovered that math really wasn't as hard as I thought it was (perhaps my mildly expressed judging had finally gelled).
So why am I telling you all of this?
For years I identified as an ENTP until my ISTP husband started telling me I sounded alot more like an ENTJ because I am a control freak around the house and with my children.
But although I will readily take responsibility and tell people what needs to be done on projects that aren't mine (I think I learned to do this because of teaching). I really don't want to take over the world nor do I have any desire to have complete control over mindless minions who do my every bidding.
In fact I would rather just do everything myself.
I would really like to create an organized system that works for me and would be especially pleased if those who cohabitate with me would simply use it!
So do I sound like an INTJ? (albeit a verbal one?)
The first night I realized it would take a long time so I kept a piece of paper by my bedside to record the last number I counted before falling asleep. It was a week later when I was still in the ten thousands that I abanonded the idea because I realized it was going to take a lot more time than I wanted to dedicate to it.
But I had a strange "revelation" about numbers at this time. It was a vision of numbers extending in a positive line to a twisted vanishing point where it returned as a negative.
I saw eternity and zero as being equal but opposite and numbers as a giant mobius strip. In between each number was another series of smaller mobius strips. It looked like a giant eternal fractal. I had a fleeting understanding that if I could understand math I would be able to understand the framework of all creation/reality.
Of course it would be a few years before I would know what a mobius strip or a fractal was and high school before I could see the practical application of this model in trig.
Anyway, I would try to talk to the adults in my life about this stuff and get only blank smiles from them.
I think my "vision" (if you can call it that) confused my perception of math because I was never able to accurately compute numbers until college. (Or maybe I suffered from a mild form of dyscalculia).
It was common for teachers to shake their heads and tell me, "I don't get it. You seem to understand the concepts/theory in classroom disscussions why are you always failing the tests? It was a mystery to me why I was never able to get the numbers to add up.
I finally had my mathematical "aha!" moment in an algebra II class in college. My teacher had written this massive problem on the board and told everyone he would award 10 extra points on the next math test to the first person who could solve it.
About 5 or 6 students jumped up and furiously began trying to solve it for about 5 minutes. Suddenly I realized it was nothing more than a giant quadratic equation filled with a crazy amount of numbers that all cancelled out to a an equation that was so simple I could do it in my head!
I walked up to the board and wrote the number 4 to gasps of, "What is she an idiot savant?" And the world of math suddenly became understandable to me!
For the first time I saw that all math was simply reducing a big mess of symbols into easily handled smaller parts. It now became a challenging puzzle to figure out which formula I could use to solve it!
What made this all strange is that I only wanted to be a physicist/astronomer/geologist from the time I was a child. I could not wait to get to college. I was a fan of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and later James Burke's connections.
I was ecstatic at 10 when my father got me a subscription to OMNI magazine and my love for sci-fi blossomed.
It was in an article of OMNI that I first discovered fractals. Which makes an interesting point. I absolutely LOVED geometry and aced it with no problems . . . but algebra and trig were like murder to me.
However, I did not stick with math because I bombed Trig and when I scored low on the math section of my SAT my dad shook his head sadly and told me to reconsider my plans of becoming a scientist . . . besides . . . I would find it difficult as a woman in a technological field where competition was fierce.
I was devastated. My ENTJ Naval Commander and Weapons Engineer/poet/musician the smartest man in the world told me I couldn't be a scientist. And then a few months later, he died.
I was lost. I proceeded to drift for the next few years. I skipped most of my senior year only showing up on test dates. The school finally contacted my emotionally comatose mother and told her I would not graduate because I skipped 37 consecutive days. She came alive in fury and with a threatened lawsuit I graduated with my class after making up an entire sememster of work in one month.
In college I drifted from major to major until I decided to become a teacher (my dad always said that those who can't-- TEACH! LOL) Where I discovered that math really wasn't as hard as I thought it was (perhaps my mildly expressed judging had finally gelled).
So why am I telling you all of this?
For years I identified as an ENTP until my ISTP husband started telling me I sounded alot more like an ENTJ because I am a control freak around the house and with my children.
But although I will readily take responsibility and tell people what needs to be done on projects that aren't mine (I think I learned to do this because of teaching). I really don't want to take over the world nor do I have any desire to have complete control over mindless minions who do my every bidding.
In fact I would rather just do everything myself.
I would really like to create an organized system that works for me and would be especially pleased if those who cohabitate with me would simply use it!
So do I sound like an INTJ? (albeit a verbal one?)
Maybe that's why people think we want to take over the world... we're just trying to get people to adopt our systems. We probably come across as control freaks. I don't like mindless minions either... hmm... well I wouldn't mind a couple of minions to do the housekeeping and give me backrubs! 
