Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s my take on it.
I guess, my first encounter with geometry was fun. It was in first grade – and actually it wasn’t so much about geometry than about two circles that overlapped, part of what back then was a brand-new method of education, the theory of sets. I remember I was one of the few in the intersection that first day – one circle held all kids with blue pants, the other all kids with red pullovers. It was playful. It was colorful. Later, not so much.
But it was still colorful. As I loved drawing, geometry was just kind of a different genre of art to me once I was in fourth grade, or so. We were permitted to use colored pencils to make specific lines stand out. We even had colored mines for our compasses. But the poetry of color didn’t go along with the precision of thin lines.
Once entering grammar school, geometry was not so much in the wings anymore. It was more about piecing sizes of circles by way of pi than a piece of pie. Algebra and algorithms, finally calculus. It took me until 13th grade to actually enjoy the poetry of logic and the solving of mathematical puzzles. I remember that my very favorite topic in math also ended in graduation – ellipses. To calculate them, to draw in all the dots, to create these ovals from infinitesimal … was it circles?
To be honest, today I hardly remember anything of my geometry lessons at school other than the constant pencil sharpening, colorful lines, and a few formulas. And the number pi. I celebrate it each and every year with a naughty little smirk on March 14. Guess why!
