I'm Just There For Attendance

Entered biology for cute critters, stayed for differential equations and biochemical pathways! That terrified cat perfectly captures the moment when you realize your "I just like animals" degree actually involves memorizing 147 enzymes and calculating population dynamics. Meanwhile, Physics and Chemistry students are just sitting there like menacing dobermans, ready to pounce with their "real science" smugness. The wall of mathematical reality hits HARD in sophomore year! Your dreams of petting zoo adventures quickly transform into nightmares about metabolic cycles that would make Einstein's hair stand even straighter!

That moment when your prefrontal cortex has completely given up on executive function. The frontal lobe is responsible for decision-making and impulse control, but after 72 straight hours in the lab, mine just puts in its resignation letter too. Neuroanatomy puns: the last refuge of sleep-deprived researchers everywhere.

The textbook: "But the chemists in Paris who made these three routes..." Chemistry students: *intensely examining green liquid while questioning their life choices* Nothing hits quite like that moment when you're staring at a mysterious green solution wondering if those Parisian chemists were geniuses or just really good at making students suffer. Those safety goggles aren't protecting you from the existential crisis of organic synthesis pathways!

Oh look, a mathematical "shortcut" that's about as practical as using a space shuttle to grab milk from the corner store! The formula divides the digits 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 by 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 to get 8.000000729... Because apparently saying "8" is too mainstream. Next up: calculating π by measuring the circumference of your pizza with your shoelace divided by how many times you've questioned your life choices today. Mathematicians: making simple things unnecessarily complicated since Pythagoras couldn't just walk around the triangle.

The academic turf war just got spicier. In 1990, physicist Edward Witten snagged the Fields Medal (math's equivalent of a Nobel) despite being, you know, not a mathematician. Fast forward to 2024, and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton wins a Physics Nobel despite not being a physicist. Mathematicians are experiencing that special feeling when someone raids your intellectual refrigerator and then wins awards for the sandwich they made with your ingredients. The disciplinary boundaries in science are becoming as theoretical as string theory itself.

Calculus students everywhere just felt a disturbance in the force! Imagine showing up to your limit problem armed with L'Hôpital's rule—your trusty mathematical weapon for those pesky 0/0 indeterminate forms—only to find it's been "banned." The mathematical equivalent of finding out they've outlawed calculators during finals week! For the uninitiated, L'Hôpital's rule is that magical calculus technique that saves you when both numerator and denominator approach zero. Without it, you're stuck doing Taylor series expansions like some kind of animal. The horror! Next thing you know, they'll ban the quadratic formula and we'll all have to complete the square by hand. Dark times for mathematics indeed.