I’ve suspected a dyscalculia diagnosis for a while. Everything up to elementary algebra clicks with me in some fundamental way where I can intuitively do a four digit multiplication table in my head or a pharmacological weight calculation in an ambulance. It’s just like any other knowledge base to me. But then everything after that, at least through the high-level trigonometry and general calculus classes I took along with the sciences that are equation-heavy like chemistry/physics, feels like I’m illiterate no matter how much I read. Meanwhile classmates in those labs were doing the same work as intuitively as the practical side of medicine comes to me.
Applied science is definitely the route for me to take either way. I like doing anti-Cartesian science with a sense of praxis to it. I’d be shitty at the level of programming or biochemistry it takes to be a good research horticulturist, but I can interpret those studies and use them as best practices while turning my city into a living lab for my politics.
Oh man, do I have some books for you. I haven’t forgotten about you. I defend my thesis next week so my brain is crazy rn, but I have your message pinned. In the meantime, find Seeing Like A State by James Scott. Then if you
Iike that one, check out his other one called Against the Grain. One of my besties does the biochem side of things and I am the mapper, computer person.
No worries at all! I like Scott’s work a lot. Weapons of The Weak is one of the books that got me into peasant studies and changed my whole urbanism outlook.
Oh hell yes. :) He just came out with a new one about Rivers too. His outlook, well that’s the thing we joke about having any type of anthropology in your background, it’s like having secret power levels. Perspective is everything, especially in geographical contexts.
I’ve suspected a dyscalculia diagnosis for a while. Everything up to elementary algebra clicks with me in some fundamental way where I can intuitively do a four digit multiplication table in my head or a pharmacological weight calculation in an ambulance. It’s just like any other knowledge base to me. But then everything after that, at least through the high-level trigonometry and general calculus classes I took along with the sciences that are equation-heavy like chemistry/physics, feels like I’m illiterate no matter how much I read. Meanwhile classmates in those labs were doing the same work as intuitively as the practical side of medicine comes to me.
Applied science is definitely the route for me to take either way. I like doing anti-Cartesian science with a sense of praxis to it. I’d be shitty at the level of programming or biochemistry it takes to be a good research horticulturist, but I can interpret those studies and use them as best practices while turning my city into a living lab for my politics.
Oh man, do I have some books for you. I haven’t forgotten about you. I defend my thesis next week so my brain is crazy rn, but I have your message pinned. In the meantime, find Seeing Like A State by James Scott. Then if you Iike that one, check out his other one called Against the Grain. One of my besties does the biochem side of things and I am the mapper, computer person.
No worries at all! I like Scott’s work a lot. Weapons of The Weak is one of the books that got me into peasant studies and changed my whole urbanism outlook.
Oh hell yes. :) He just came out with a new one about Rivers too. His outlook, well that’s the thing we joke about having any type of anthropology in your background, it’s like having secret power levels. Perspective is everything, especially in geographical contexts.