I was always jealous of artists that drew really well. I do many things: write stories, compose music, do math etc. etc. But I could never draw the way I wanted. Probably due to lack of practice as I would always be occupied. But there is always this desire to be able to draw well in the back of my mind.
A few months ago I sat down with a notebook and paper and began drawing. After 3 or 4 hours of trying I finally managed to draw a woman’s face JUST the way I wanted it to be. Like, straight out of my mind.
I get a lot of compliments. I am regarded as one of the smartest in the family and people regularly comment on my skillset. I do not enjoy getting compliments. They are background noise. Since I am used to getting compliments and the knowledge I have has been gained from reading and doing stuff for fun, I never ever really felt that “achievement” feeling. Like, shit just happened man I didn’t really work for it. Well I DID but guess not enough to register as something worthwhile I suppose.
So being able to draw a face was the first feeling of achieving something in my life. And my greatest so far. Will probably remain that way for a long time.
I think math education sucks. I hated math in school. I would get 0s because I was sitting there figuring out easier ways to get the right answer. Literally making up my own equations. And they’d say I had to do it the normal way or I’d get a 0. And so much of it is just pointlessly slow and boring. As an adult I got some math textbooks based on Soviet Pedagogy and went through them a bit. It was so much nicer. I still haven’t bothered to learn as much math as you have though. I still have the books so maybe eventually i will. I just have no like intense need to know it so have been doing other things. It’s something I do on days I’m bored with nothing to do. I’ve found that for me to actually learn something I have to understand it down to the most fundamental levels. If I’m just memorizing some equation then I won’t learn it. I’ll struggle. I need to deconstruct everything and know conceptually why the equation works the way it does.
That is intriguing! Where did you got those books and in what language? I would be very interested to see them,I have relatives who finished school in soviet union and said that math classes where divided in each field, bot just math class. So by age of 14 they had 3/4 different math classes.
So, the good thing is you don’t need to know Russian. There was a wave where the US realized it was very behind in math and basically adopted the Soviet Pedagogy carte blanche(in the advanced fields anyway not K-12). So you can find college level math textbooks that are in english and based on Soviet works from the time. The main textbook I have like this is something I inherited It’s simply called “Univeristy Mathematics I” and is by Jack R Britton and , R. Ben Kriegh of the University of Colorado, and Leon W. Rutland of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Library of Congress Catalogue Number is 65-11880 if that helps. I can’t tell you where to find it, but perhaps thriftbooks.com could be a good place to look for similar things? In it’s citations it lists The USSR Olympiad Problem Book: Selected Problems and Theorems of Elementary Mathematics, among other things I don’t feel like typing out. It has a lot of them.
It covers by Chapter: Fundamental Ideas, The Complex Number System, Algebraic Expressions Equations and Inequalities, Geometry and Real Numbers, Relations and Functions, Linear and Quadratic Equations, Trigonometric Functions, Limits and Continuity, The Derivative and the Inverse Derivative, Theorems on Derivatives, Further Aplications of the Derivative, The Definite Integral, Exponential and Logarithmic Functions, The Calculus of Trigonometic and Hyperbolic Functions, and Formal Integration and Applications.
It’s very good for going into the conceptual level on everything and getting a complete understanding. As it is from the 1960s it doesn’t just assume you have a calculator either. So I’ve been using it to really build out my foundational understanding.
I also have some other books that expand into like Calc, Calc with Analytical Geometry, Applied Differential Equatons, etc. But this is the big like overview one where as those are about very specific things. I wish I had a PDF I could just send you, but it’s literally a physical book I got out of my dead grandfathers workshop. He was a chemical engineer and had a lot of old stuff lying around like that.