I am 28. I work at a bagel shop. I am a mathematician. My story and why I started this channel.

hi everyone I work at a bagel shop I am 28 years old and I'm an aspiring mathematician as the video says so that's an interesting intro and I hope to give a little bit of background on myself and what I'm hoping to get out of this channel so I I guess my math journey uh really kind of started in college uh I liked math and was decent at it and found myself on the way to uh majoring in it and there came a point where math became more creative um um I was always just the

the way in which I did it was just follow steps and memorize and I was fine at that it was it was all right uh but there wasn't as much understanding my partner uh was studying abroad at the The Budapest semesters in mathematics and uh I visited her and that experience was very formative in my math journey most everyone there really really enjoyed math and they would go to cafes and be there for hours uh solving math problems together and that was fun um and there was joy in it and it was so creative and

just really their the way of being um of pretty much everyone there was was so intriguing to me um and so I came back and I took later that uh in the next semester I took my first first pretty much my first upper level math class uh abstract algebra and just tried to think about what I saw in Budapest and that I I was more creative than I had been in that class uh than I had in in any other class and it was really uh really kind of my first time of experiencing that creativity

in math because I uh I always had this impression in my head you know it was a lot about memorization uh and just kind of following uh what other people were doing um regardless of what people said you know at a certain point I think you do need to understand more but that was the point where I saw Math More as something beautiful and like an art form and something that you um really work at and and see the Improvement um and that got me really excited uh after college I taught at a boarding school

and I taught math um because I I I had this idea that uh you know I I had this understanding I saw how math can be beautiful and um I kind of wanted to share that and I get there and it was not that at all I had a really hard time uh teaching uh I learned just how important it is uh you know the the connecting with the students is is just as important as the the material um and I felt I couldn't get around both of those um I couldn't you know the material

I was given was just these uh kind of older textbooks what I had uh learned out of in school um nothing new and I I wasn't really that uh inspired by it I I couldn't figure out how to translate this this spark of a feeling that I felt um you know in Budapest and in taking abstract algebra um in this class and so uh I had a hard time and but but the one not the one but a big light in that whole situation was the beginning of this of this Channel and the reason why

I started this channel um was actually an encounter with a student uh um who was in the the math Olympiad summer program and I learned a bit about that test and uh the types of problems on that test and I I saw it was kind of a way for younger students to experience understanding in math um and to to get at that beauty it wasn't about memorizing uh it wasn't about um you know just copying down uh it was those those problems I felt kind of seemed to push uh younger students to to understand more

um and he was he was quite good and he had an appreciation of math um and I I learned a bit about the the test from him uh and just to see a high school student that was so interested in math and wanted to take math further in college and and really had an appreciation uh for it not just doing it because he was good at it he he wanted to to do it I I thought that was phenomenal and it reignited that this spark um and that following summer I started this Channel and I

started posting videos of me solving these problems s um and the name comes from why math this idea that I think I was starting to understand uh why I was doing math uh when I went to Budapest or why I wanted to do math um because it was this creative beautiful thing um and just doing that for its own sake is wonderful um and I felt like I lost that a bit in teaching um but I wanted to know well why should these students be learning math why should I be teaching math um and I

I knew of the experience that I had had but I I couldn't uh I felt like I couldn't um share that or teach that and so in a way this YouTube channel was um the beginning of me trying to figure out why math and figure out how I could share that and really it's been going for four years the past four years I haven't made a single video of me talking about any of this it's all just me doing problems and I've done however many videos there are over 12 UND uh problems and videos uh

and for some reason right now I feel compelled to share a bit more about my story and kind of my my relationship with math um so I I taught for uh about two years and I left and I did the worked uh posted videos from the channel off and on during that time um and then after I actually I left teaching because I was uh I didn't see it um and I just kind of felt okay I'll move into something that I am passionate about I'm a runner I went to work at a running store

um and I enjoyed that at first um and and stayed there for about three years um but then left that job um because I I didn't um I didn't see it there for me um and fast forward to right now I am working at a bagel shop and I make bagels and it's quite simple there's no slack that I'm using no no messages to interfere um I will boil Bagels um which is when you put bagels in a a pot of hot boiling water um and let them boil on each side for 30 seconds um

on a weekend I'll boil bagels for three and 1 half hours straight um and you know what interesting this experience kind of reignited um my my interest in exploring math more um and I find that intriguing uh because it was out of this process this simple process of you know what I loved about math 2 was just this it really got me to focus um on one thing which I I think is quite important in life where I I found I was uh distracted by my phone and and things around me um but I found

math to be this this place I could go to explore and find beauty and it was on paper um I I kind of felt that or or do feel that um in working in this bagel shop and it's totally to the outside uh Observer it's it it may seem totally irrelevant to math but I feel that this experience right now of working at The Bagel Shop has allowed me to see math and and come back into math with a new lens and after four years over 1,00 videos of me not showing my face and uh

just solving problems on here I believe I'm ready to more so commit to this and share aspects of uh my mathematics Journey um I don't know where this will go I'm not uh as you can see by the videos I'm not anything special um you know where where where could this go I don't know um is it do I have something to say about mathematics as a whole where um how how much how many different things can I study and and what am I interested in I'm I'm interested in exploring that um and also um

um in my work in the bagel shop how does that tie into some of these things that I've experienced in math because I I find it interesting how that work uh is inspiring me really to to make this video so in a nutshell that's that's a brief history of why math and more more to come on this um this is just the the beginning of Y math