The STEM Major Life Trajectory Charts

Spent 4 years mastering differential equations and complex analysis only to become Uncle Bob's human calculator at Olive Garden. Nothing says "wasted potential" like using your math degree to divide by 5 and add a little extra. Meanwhile, your phone has a calculator app, but why use technology when there's a math major dying inside at the table? The true calculus of disappointment is realizing you peaked at long division.

The fearless organic chemist, who casually synthesizes compounds that could melt your face off, suddenly turns into a quivering mess at the sight of a partial differential equation. Nothing induces cold sweats in a chemistry lab quite like someone whispering "let's derive this mathematically." We'll happily balance electron transfers in our sleep but ask us to integrate by parts and suddenly we're considering alternative career paths.

Oh, the classic case of an astrophysicist let loose on undergrad math students. The first car represents the proper, textbook explanation of tangent bundles—a concept most math students already find terrifying. But then our starry-eyed professor decides to "simplify" with his astrophysics analogy: "a vector transforms like a vector." Profound! Revolutionary! Completely unhelpful! This is exactly why math departments hide when they see physicists approaching with that "I could teach this better" gleam in their eyes. The students' tuition doesn't cover the therapy they'll need after this explanation.

This graph is the emotional rollercoaster we ALL experience during calculus exams! The derivative of anxiety starts climbing as the test begins, peaks when you realize you forgot everything, then briefly dips during the multiple choice (thank goodness for educated guessing). Then comes the panic spike when you notice the pattern of selecting "C" five times in a row (surely that can't be right?), followed by the despair of not finding your answer among the choices. The final anxiety explosion happens when you realize you've done several problems wrong - right as time expires! The beautiful irony? This is literally a derivative graph in a calculus exam about derivatives. Math professors are secretly evil geniuses!

The eternal cycle of academic suffering, perfectly illustrated with Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill. Every researcher knows this torment—start with prerequisites (boring), skip to advanced material (impossibly hard), then back to basics, forever trapped in this hellish loop. It's why my bookshelf contains both "Quantum Physics for Dummies" and "Advanced Theoretical Physics" with equal amounts of dust. The academic version of "you can't get there from here."

Mathematical fame is just built different. While Hollywood celebrities get paparazzi and fan clubs, mathematicians get... their name mentioned in a dusty textbook 100 years after they're dead. The reward for solving that impossible equation? Some grad student in 2187 might mutter "huh, neat" while skimming through references. Fame in mathematics is essentially posthumous obscurity with extra steps.