vtsnowedin wrote:I took surveying in high school because it was interesting and calculus was not.
I completely agree. Proto-geologists where I came from are required to take a course learning how to do it, like we were all supposed to go on to a career creating USGS quadrangles. Geometry is geomtry. I don't remember as much as I should have, never used it again and not much stuck. I remember it requiring field trips, a summer camp out west (pretty cool for a eastern woodlands dude), loved it. Calculus was just...math.
vtsnowedin wrote:You will be amused that my graduating class from High school was just 21.
No I wouldn't. Mine was 39. And 4 upon graduation went to the Naval Academy and 1 to the Air Force academy. We were known for our swimmers, and they seemed to go Navy as a matter of course. All of us went to college, all the usual places. It was kind of the thing to do there.
vtsnowedin wrote:Our fiftieth reunion is coming up and all but one are still alive and the one loss was a girl killed while serving in the Navy in 1976.
Put on all the math wizard airs you want I am not impressed.
Just because math comes easy doesn't make one a wizard. In retrospect, it seems to be just one of the necessary skill sets necessary to...advance. You have described a substantial investment in your career, doing something you liked, and retired early from it. I'm nearing the end of career #3. Math has been involved in all of them. Important, but statistics is the language of science, and that one I didn't begin learning until I was nearly 35.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"