ON ARTSY GEEKS

I attended a youth math tournament competition hosted by blackpenredpen (☀️ into math and follows him on yt). The auditorium was packed and everyone could participate via their cellphones. There was one guy (it was mainly dudes) that stood out to me, and I was rooting for him. He did not look like everyone else—mostly shy types dressed in bland colors; he had a tee-shirt that said “gallery” on it with faded turquoise, pinks, and yellows. He was spunky and cute and of course I’d want the artsy outsider to win. You’d think one of the die-hard geeks would finish first, not the one who had the flashiest moniker, tiger-something. (I checked my photo reel but I did not take any pics—ran out of juice as I recall.) They had to do the final about three times because it kept ending up at a tie and at the final final FINAL one the artsy guy wrote the answer so mind-numbingly fast he was the clear winner. It turns out blackpenredpen had featured the exact same problem on his channel and our flashy tiger had seen it so knew the answer instantly and ended up winning.

People seem to think the artsy or creative side is less-professional, logical, math-like whereas it probably enhances the ability to creatively problem-solve. Even with the YT trick, he deserved to win. You should not have to hide or suppress that artsy part of oneself to seem more like a true engineer or mathematician—that’s such a societal mistake. Everyone else in that room, if they had ever even had that spark, already had it trained out of them, and/or anyone who had it got tracked away from math or engineering for giving off a non-serious vibe. Mentors, teachers, etc tend to select people like themselves, so they just reinforce the cycle—the charismatic ones make them uncomfortable.

Whereas we need more of those smart, spunky types because the ploddingly dull ones will just engineer us all to a bland, boring nowheresville existence where no one really wants to be including them!