A Beautiful Mind is a very amazing movie depicted the life and struggle of John Nash. He was a very intelligent mathematician who eventually developed schizophrenia but did eventually "recover" from it. After decades of struggling with paranoid delusions and absurd impulsions he eventually was able to control those delusions, and was able to finally live a normal life again. Now the movie depicted John Nash as, although very pompous about his own genius, a genuinely decent person. I recently finished the actual novel "A Beautiful Mind" and he was a jerk! His first kid was with a woman he cared very little about, and although he had a very good job at MIT he refused to support her or the child in any way. He was constantly verbally abusive to her, and actually married his wife while still involved with her. Smashing good read though.
Anyway, math is delicious. Math is wonderful, amazing and beautiful. I am currently a mechanical engineering major and although there are many things about engineering that do appeal to me, like building super cool things, I would love nothing more than to be a mathematician. Why don't I pursue a career in math? Because I am far too materialistic. John Nash was well off but that's mostly because he came from a well off family. Einstein even was pretty strapped for cash up until he won the nobel prize. What I'm trying to say is even the best of the brightest scholars do not make enough to satisfy my materialism. That's why I'm going into engineering. I feel even a mediocre engineer working for a good company can make more than Einstein, pure career wise. I am not known for mediocrity though, I'm going to be one hell of an engineer, Tony Stark status. Or at least Will Smith in Seven Pounds, also a very good movie. I do want to get my doctorate in mathematics someday, but then it will be mostly for fun, and of course the title. I hope this is 250 words.
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Actually, mathematicians have made buckets of money on Wall Street, creating and managing financial instruments based on calculus, called derivatives. Of course, those same derivatives have been partly responsible for the recent financial collapse, in part because no one other than the mathematicians understood them ... But math is a big deal these days, and there are in fact people who will pay handsomely to have one on the payroll.
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