I disagree. I did engineering in college so I wouldn’t have to write. Then after college, I thought I’d write a monstrous research paper and, predictably, I could not finish it. It’s been 8 years. I’m wondering wtf I’ve been doing with my life, and I feel like I should have something to show for it. But the truth is I do not want to finish it. I hate writing. I hate having to think so hard about how other people think.

With math, there’s an endpoint. There’s a right answer. You know when you’re finished. With writing, there are a million ways to say the same thing. Who knows what people will listen to. People are complicated, so you’re never finished.

With writing, it can always be better. It’s impossible to ever be satisfied. With math, there’s a right answer, and there’s an optimal way to get to that answer. And back in college at least, if I was ever stuck on a math/engineering problem, I could persist until I solved it. I could know if anyone else in the class got it right, so could I. There was a lot of security in that, as I knew my effort wouldn’t be wasted. Failure wasn’t possible. This was simple and easy.

Writing is horrible. With pretty much anything I want to say, I know there’s a better way to say it, and I know someone else is probably better at figuring that out than I am. And there’s all this pressure to say it in a way other people will *get.* And thanks to all the time I’ve wasted trying to do something I suck at, my brain is now fried and I can barely remember math.