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The innocent high schooler's dream of designing cool planes crashes into the harsh reality wall built by engineering students! That moment when you realize those "fun math problems" about trains meeting each other were just the appetizer before they serve you differential equations with a side of thermodynamics. The poor kid's still thinking engineering is just "math and planes and shit" while actual engineering students are having existential breakdowns over their fourth all-nighter this week. It's like wanting to be an astronaut because space is pretty, then discovering you need to understand orbital mechanics first! The academic equivalent of "I came looking for copper and found pain."

The origin story of every engineer who started with a math degree. Little Billy just wanted to learn about money, but completely misunderstood the lesson. Instead of investing cash, he invested in a math degree—the financial equivalent of buying a boat with a hole in it. Pure mathematicians spend years proving theorems that have no practical applications while living on ramen noodles. Then one day, reality hits and they reluctantly cross over to the dark side of applied science. Engineering: where math majors go when they finally want to afford groceries.

The true mathematical horror story! The top panel shows the elegant mathematical notation for the Taylor series of e^(-1), a beautiful infinite sum that equals 1/e. Then comes the bottom panel with the same formula written in LaTeX code—the programming language mathematicians use to typeset equations. That transition from clean math to cryptic code is enough to make any math enthusiast break into a cold sweat. It's like seeing your crush's face vs. their genetic code—same information, wildly different experience! The real nightmare isn't monsters under your bed—it's forgetting a bracket in your 3-page LaTeX document the night before submission.

The FBI agent assigned to your laptop webcam is getting quite the education in scientific computing! Nothing says "I'm definitely not a threat to national security" like spending 6 hours trying to debug a for-loop in MATLAB that should have taken 5 minutes. The agent probably started the day thinking they'd catch a criminal mastermind, but instead they're watching someone whisper-scream "WHY WON'T YOU CONVERGE?!" at a simulation that's been running since Tuesday. Honestly, the real conspiracy here is how MATLAB continues to be the standard despite making perfectly competent scientists look like they've never touched a computer before.

Math textbooks have officially evolved from "the proof is trivial" to "the proof is literally illegal." This textbook takes procrastination to PhD level by claiming that proving a theorem without proper mathematical machinery would break international law. It's the academic equivalent of telling your professor "I'd show my work, but then I'd have to kill you." Next up: theorems that can only be proven during a solar eclipse while standing on one foot.

Mathematicians just collectively gasped! This poor guy thought claiming 1 as his favorite prime number would impress his date's dad, but instead earned an immediate eviction notice. Here's the mathematical heartbreak: 1 is NOT a prime number because prime numbers must have exactly two distinct factors (1 and themselves). The number 1 only has one factor—itself! This mathematical faux pas is like showing up to a physics conference claiming your favorite particle is the "electronium" or telling a chemist you love the element "surprisium." Dad's giving him one second to leave because that's approximately how long it takes for a mathematician to lose respect for someone who doesn't know their prime numbers. Dating tip: maybe stick to "I like your daughter" instead of faking mathematical knowledge!