The 20-Year-Old Prover

Quantum physics? Nah, just basic counting. Unless Trixie's rabbits exist in a superposition state, they come in whole numbers only. The intermediate value theorem from calculus might suggest she'd pass through 3.3 rabbits going from 2 to 4, but last I checked, rabbits don't come in decimals. What would 0.3 of a rabbit even look like? A fluffy ear? A twitchy nose? Perhaps the professor who wrote this was thinking of Schrödinger's rabbit—simultaneously alive, dead, and apparently, fractional.

When your physics professor says "it's a simple problem" but then hits you with "remember to take air resistance into consideration." That's when your soul leaves your body! What started as a basic kinematics problem suddenly transforms into a differential equation nightmare with drag coefficients. Physics students know that "simple" is code for "I'm about to ruin your weekend with fluid dynamics." The facial expression captures that moment of realization when F=ma becomes F=ma-bv² and your calculator starts sweating.

This flowchart is what happens when career counselors have a mental breakdown. Engineering? Only if you're "good with things." Chemistry? Congratulations on your future as a "fussy pedant." And let's not forget Computer Science, perfect for those who prefer "slow, indirect evil" over the more efficient varieties. The beautiful part is how it nails the existential crisis of every STEM student. "Why do you want to major in a STEM field?" Options include "curiosity" (adorable), "to save the planet" (delusional), or my personal favorite, the dawning realization that STEM was supposed to involve actual plants for Biology majors. After 30 years of teaching, I can confirm this is approximately 87% accurate. The missing 13% is the path where you choose your major based on which department has the least uncomfortable chairs in the lecture hall.

Pure engineering genius at work! Why bother with mathematical precision when you can just make the universe conform to your convenience? Pi = 3? Gravity = 10 m/s²? And voilà, your bridge almost connects! That tiny gap is just a "margin of error" or as engineers call it, "a pedestrian's exciting leap of faith." Next time your civil engineer friend says they're "building with safety factors," just remember this is what they actually mean. The bridge isn't incomplete—it's just giving you the opportunity to practice your long jump skills!

Scientists: *discover cis-trans isomerism* Nature: "I've been doing that for billions of years." From chemistry with double-bonded molecules where groups are on same/opposite sides, to biology with healthy fats vs. trans fats, to mathematics with trig functions and geometric transformations—the cis/trans dichotomy is universal. Just like that one grad student who keeps "transforming" the communal coffee from full to empty without making a new pot.

The expanding brain meme perfectly captures the mathematician's descent into madness. Starting with "direct proof" (basic skull), we progress through increasingly galaxy-brain methods until we reach the final boss: "proof by lack of counterexample" – which is basically saying "I can't think of why I'm wrong, so I must be right." Every math professor has witnessed the horror of a student writing "clearly" or "obviously" before the most convoluted statement imaginable. And don't get me started on "proof is left as an exercise to the reader" – the academic equivalent of "figure it out yourself, I'm going to lunch." It's what professors do when they either can't solve it themselves or are too lazy to write out all the steps. Pure mathematical terrorism.