What Are You Going to Do with a Math Degree?

I went to a liberal arts college and got a math degree. It wasn't the popular choice on a campus full of artists, free-thinkers, writers, and the socially conscious. I don't think I ever took a math class that had more than 11 students.

It was a lonely major. But the student-teacher ratio was unbeatable.

Whenever majors came up in conversation, I was asked, "What are you going to do with that degree?"

Back then, I didn't have an answer. I figured a degree's a degree, get the check mark, get hired, and then learn what they actually want me to do.

Reflecting, I was probably following my Dad's lead. He got his undergrad degree in math.

I liked the clear-cut nature of solving math problems. Different from classes that required essays, papers, and reports, and where the evaluation process was more ambiguous, math was a black-and-white game.

Get a problem, show your work, compute the right answer, and yeah for you…a clear win!

Each problem you solve gives you a little more confidence to tackle tougher ones.

There was some ego involved. It seems that most people, at some time in their lives, have had a bad experience learning math. Maybe a teacher made them "feel stupid" or they just struggled to understand the subject, but if you can solve math problems, people tend to think you're smarter than you are.

Far be it for me to convince them otherwise.

I asked a few math professors about potential career choices. Seemed to boil down to two options: actuary (and I had to look up what that was) and teacher.

I wasn't interested in either of those. But my Dad told me on a couple of occasions: "Math teaches you how to think. And there's no profession you pick, where you won't need that skill."

I was pretty sure my future career would be in sales. It's sad to think that this profession never used any of the complex math topics I studied in college--graph theory, calculus, numerical analysis, probability, etc.

But I have used one skill that math beat into me. I learned how to wrestle with a problem, not get an immediate answer, and keep trying and trying until I did.

As an example, we were a year and a half into our startup multifamily billing company. We launched the business at the beginning of 2009, one of the worst economic times to start anything.

The prospects we were pursuing, multifamily owners and property management companies, were losing money, cutting staff, and scaling back their businesses quickly.

My financial situation was a source of constant anxiety. We hadn't earned enough revenue to pay even a small salary. I was living off credit cards and family loans.

It wasn't like I could look into the future and point to a time when things were likely to improve.

Here's my journal entry on 11.20.2010:

Sometimes the distinctions that will move a business forward happen so slowly and imperceptibly. I know that our marketing efforts are not producing the results we need to make this business sustainable in the long run.?

I also believe that 'Hope is not a Strategy.' If we're going to solve the problem of how to create more business, and that's my job, I have to think myself out of this hole and through this problem.

I leaned heavily on the problem-solving discipline I learned from math.

The problems facing our company didn’t determine if we passed or failed an exam. They had major consequences for all the principals and their families.

The solutions were elusive. There was no professor to turn to for help.

The only thing I could think to do was to write down what I knew, take a guess at a solution, and take some action.?

When that action didn't change our results, I had to think of something else and try that.?

There were no shortcuts. No one was going to fly out of the sky and help our business. We had to muddle through, struggle, fail, and figure out something that would work.

Quitting was not an option.

I don't know if I can express how scared I was back then. It would take another year, and thousands of dollars of additional debt, before our company started to solve its revenue problem.

We were 2.5 years in before all the founders could draw enough money to cover our monthly bills.

You don't need a math degree to develop problem-solving discipline. If you can become stronger at weathering the frustration that happens when you don't find an immediate solution, that's a start.

Challenge yourself to think of potential solutions. Try them. If you fail, don't get blown out of the water. That's progress.

If you can push back against the natural inclination to pursue something easier or quit altogether, your resilience gets stronger.

Trust that if you just keep thinking, trying, iterating, and persisting over time, you'll produce the outcomes you’re looking for. No one can say how long that period is, but when it gets scary, trust yourself even more. You have everything you need.

If the problem you're trying to solve happens to be actuarial, however, you might just have to bust out one of those dusty textbooks or e-mail a professor!

Ganbatte kudasai!

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