A couple months ago I started on a journey. I had realized that with years of being left on the shelf, my skills in mathematics had started to decline. The logical reasoning processes have stuck with me - the whole college is there to teach you to "learn how to learn" adage.

Still, it saddened me to a degree that I was beginning to forget some of the theorems that I used to be able to prove. Then I had this wild idea, what if throughout all of my education each successive year I had been forgetting little pieces of the past years. Worse yet, given the inneficiencies of our education system, what if there were gems of knowledge left uncovered?

I looked online to see what tools were at my disposal to discover these unkown gems and brush the dust away, and I ran across one of the most brilliantly designed tools to educate (or re-educate in my case), Khan Academy. This site has helped my journey guiding it through a time warp taking me all the way from the axioms of basic addition into calculus and hopefully beyond!

Currently, I'm reviewing the later half of what is typically considered a first semester in calculus; the journey has been at break neck speed only possible by reviewing once forgotten material. It has revealed connections between equations and formulas that were previously unkown to me or simply taken for granted - simply used to finish the homework or pass an exam (most students have been there before!)

Unfortunately, the practice material on Khan Academy is a bit sparse once you start reaching into calculus (for now at least), so I have switched back to textbooks, although Khan Academy still has an excellent variety of videos on all of calculus and higher math. Shortly after completing all the practice sets available on the site at the time (345!), I also ran across a new inspiration.

A video had recently been posted to one of my favorite news channels, Hacker News, showing an artform of extreme mastery and beauty - I had been introduced to the demoscene.

During my recent dive into calculus, I have been making trips to the local library, mostly for a change of scenery, but also in search of a new language to describe the stunning pictures in that video. I found a book, "Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science". From the very first chapter it has exposed an entirely new geometry foreign to my traditional education, and revealed just how strange math can truly be. I'm not very far into the book yet - only a couple chapters in, frequently having to pause to think and re-read sections (big difference when the material is new!) but am enjoying it immensely. I searched youtube to see if any videos on this strange topic have been created, but unfortunately searching for fractals only reveals pretty pictures. Maybe I'll get around to sharing a part of this journey and make some videos of my own Sal Kahn style.

I still have a long road ahead of me, but I do have the determination to achieve and will one day create my own demo reel!