The Irony of My Life
“Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up” — George Saunders (American Writer)
This is the story of the irony in my life. It’s about several things that I used to hate, but I ended up loving it.
1. Mathematical Logic
Mathematical logic is a sub-branch of the mathematic field which studies formal logic. It comprises true-false statements, truth tables, logical conclusions, etc¹. I got to learn the subject way back in the 1st year of high school. I hate it. I thought: “What kind of math is this? There are no numbers and it’s kinda dumb to calculate or quantify correctness. Is it even quantifiable? Where’s the math in this?” — younger me ranting.
As it turns out, it is the basis of computer science — the major that I would like to take in college. Computers are computing using binary numbers², a numerical system that only consists of 0 and 1. Apparently, that’s mathematical logic right there. Zero (0) is represented as “false” while one (1) is represented as “true”.
There it is… the one subject that I’ve always ridiculed for the past years turns out to be the very own basis of the knowledge that I would like to pursue as a career.
2. History
This is the subject that I really hate back then in my school years. I thought: “What’s the point in studying the past? Why keep remembering events that are long gone? Why do I have to remember all these dates?”.
But now, I really love watching documentaries which are basically a history lesson in a video format. One of the shows that I have on my Netflix is History 101.
I’m drawn to origin stories. It’s fascinating to learn how a certain thing is as it is. Now I understand the words of one of my former history teachers back then: “We study the past, in order to determine the correct decisions for today and tomorrow”.
3. Literature
In my country, there are four school subjects that need to be passed by the students in the national exam. Literature is the one I hate the most. I’ve mentioned in several of my stories that my career goal is to be a software engineer. That’s why I love “exact science” like Math or Physics, because in those subjects if you’re wrong then you’re wrong — there’s no in-between. In Math, if the answer is 10 but your answer is 11, then your answer’s wrong. But that’s not the case for literature.
How can you measure or calculate something that has no “exact” answer? Let’s say… you are given a task to create a short essay. How do you know if the essay is considered to be “good” or “bad”? My essay can be considered as “good” for some people, but also can be “bad” for others. It’s really subjective to the teacher who graded the assignment, not objective at all! That’s just one case. What about poems? What about a question of “what’s the idea of the writer for this essay?”. Why can the teacher determine what’s the idea of a paragraph? They’re not the ones who wrote it, so what do they know? Questions like: “what is the message that the writer wants to give?” — Hell! I don’t know, go ask the writer 😂
Because of the lack of “exactness” (IDK if this is a word) and too many subjectivities rather than objectivities, I often got into an argument with my literature teacher about the answers that they considered is the “correct” answer while I think they’re not. It has been like that since junior high.
But despite all that… here I am, writing a bunch of stories in Medium. That one subject that I really hate the most back then, now I ended up doing it on daily basis. The 12-year-old me never would have thought that I gonna be so eager in writing stories. It used to take all of me just to write, now it can be done so easily.
Finally
There’s this pun in the Indonesian language that “benci” (hate) stands for “benar-benar cinta” (truly love). So…what can I say? Be careful of what you hate, you might end up loving it 😂
Thank you for reading the irony of my life.
Cheers 🍻 — Ferzos
