Summary
June 1, 2007
Dear Friends,
My experience is over, but the memories will live on—I hope. Now that I am home it feels like I never left. My experience seems like many disconnected memories that only when triggered come together into a coherent thought. So I hope I continue triggering those memories.
My friend Karl and I had such a great time in Budapest; it was a great way to end the semester. We did many great things in Budapest. Highlights: going to the baths, the Vasarely Muesum (an Op-Art artist) and seeing a Marcel Breuer exhibit. I forgot he designed the St. John’s University chapel (sorry dad!), so we were excited that a gallery in Budapest featured a chapel in Minnesota. My last night in Budapest Karl and I met Alan “Andy” Stout, another Ole, and the three of us toured the city. I ate my last dinner on Ráday utca, my street, at the Soul Café. Then we headed to the Gerbeaud Café, one of the most famous in Budapest (and Europe), where I had a Sacher Torte. Then the three of us headed to Pótkulcs, my favorite bar in Budapest. I had to say goodbye to these places. Then I walked down Ráday for the last time on this trip. I will probably miss Ráday the most: the culture, the food and the life.
By showing Karl and Alan the city, it helped me realize how much I have learned this semester. My last night we walked down Váci utca and I pointed out the pub where I took the two Czech girls; I have learned a lot since then. I was a naïve American back then, but now I am a global citizen. As Americans, we think that we are the best, the rest of the world is to serve our interests and how could any other place do things better than we? It is true that America does things more efficiently, maximizes profits and reduces costs, but we do these things by sacrificing design, quality, thought and community. Yes, community. America is self-serving in our global community. Instead of Westernization and Globalization, I hope as a global community we can be interdependent on one and another; I hope that we can we can recognize the things which we share in common as global citizens instead of segregating ourselves by our differences; I hope that we can recognize ourselves as fellow global citizens help each other instead of fulfilling our selfish needs. Perhaps I’m too optimistic.
I have learned about many different cultures through my travels to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Turkey, Denmark and also throughout Hungary. I have not only learned about these cultures, but also appreciate these cultures and to some extent, these cultures have changed who I am—helping to mold me into a global citizen.
I have learned a lot of hard math. The math was extremely difficult at times, but about a month ago, everything started to come together. In Number Theory, the problems became interesting instead of overwhelming. In geometry, we studied different types of geometries, which were very fascinating (especially projective and hyperbolic). In combinatorics, we studies Ramsey Theory, which is a very new field in Mathematics and very little is known about it. For example, consider this problem: in a group of six people, there are always three people that know each other or three people that don’t know each other. And, this does not hold true for five people, or less. It is not very intuitive thinking.
Most importantly, I learned the system for doing math. No, there is no formula for doing math; this system comes from months (and years) of hard work. If there were an explicit formula, then what would be the point of studying math? The famous physicist Richard Feynman came up with the following algorithm for problem-solving:
- Write down problem
- Think very hard
- Write down the solution
Hehehe. Well, through this program, I learned how to do number two: think very hard, and that is done with the BSM-algorithm:
- Experiment
- Conjecture
- Prove
To accomplish each of these steps you must think very hard, too, but it is at least a loose system to get you started.
Finally, I learned a lot about myself. While this semester was hard socially at times, I became much more independent.
Daniel