8.2.10
There was another factor to my leaving the PhD program behind. Namely, I was becoming someone. Not necessarily someone that I didn't want to be, a mathematician, but regardless of who, my self was being determined.
Becoming someone is a frightening process. I'm twenty seven years old and still letting go of my childhood. As an American in an upper-middle class family, I had the opportunity to become anybody I wanted. As time goes on, I've been having to let go of whatever potential I've ever had and actually become someone. Even though in my opinion as an English teacher I'm not becoming anybody, which perhaps is one of the things that has appealed to me about the job, I'm nevertheless losing my potential.
I've seen two movies in the theater since I got back, neither of which is worth much mention, except the Book of Eli sends a message I don't quite agree with. At the end of the movie, Eli achieves his goal, and then dies peacefully. I suppose the idea is that we all have a certain purpose in life, after the fulfillment of which we can die happy. But maybe I missunderstood this idea, or the Russian, because then I think the young girl declares with the confidence of someone who's found their purpose in life that she's going to return home. What's she going to do then? Die peacefully?
There was an advertisement on TV about a film of a group of young people, Americans I think, who made a list of one hundred things they wanted to do before they died, then quit their jobs and set off to do the things on the list. Maybe the idea is that you shouldn't just let life go by working in an office for several decades. But making a list of things you want to do before you die is the another extreme, because again, what do they do when they've finished the list?

14.2.10
That's not right about not becoming anybody as an English teacher. To some extent, I have found myself in this profession. That's not to say I'm happy with my job, but that I have become someone. I could potentially continue this line of work for the rest of my life and in doing so, I don't think I would change very much as a teacher. I could lead a normal life, making shy of fifteen hundred dollars a month teaching English in Russia. Why don't I do that if I love living here so much?
Studying math became a sad story after awhile. I was like the main character from the novel Flowers for Alginon. I seemed to get more and more retarded as time went on. The more I studied math, the less attractive it became, the less I was able to understand it. It was as though I had become fluent in mathematics through the first year of graduate study, and then I began to lose the ability to understand it. It was as though I had mathematical alzheimers.
I like to hope that I didn't lose the ability as much as the motivation to study further. I like to think I was a classic case of a burnt out graduate student. Indeed, I know there were other students in the program who studied just as despairingly as me. I remember one of the Chinese students declaring that there was nothing else for him to do, his only chance was to continue studying. At that time, I could have said the same thing, but my experience in Germany was calling me, bidding me to leave the country again.
The year I spent in Germany was a pandora's box for me. It has made my life very interesting and very complicated. Or maybe I'm the only one who complicates things. Regardless, had it not been for Germany, I think I would've said the same thing as the Chinese student. I would have had faith in the idea that there was nothing else for me.
There I was, retarded in my math classes, and excelling in a few Russian classes that my advisor let me take. Spending half the effort it took to learn about K-theory, I seared through Russian declination tables like a hot knife through butter. Studying Russian, the wind was at my back, and studying math became more and more like running into a brick wall. My fate had been decided, I only needed to find the American Home to realize it.
Russian hasn't lost its appeal. However, I think it will after awhile. If I continue learning at the current rate, I would estimate that with another year here, my listening and speaking proficiency in Russian would reach between seventy and eighty percent of my corresponding proficiencies in English. (Put in such a way, maybe that's not saying much. Let's not even mention writing proficieny...) That's a big if, whether I will continue at the same rate. On one hand, the more Russian you understand, the easier it becomes to learn more. On the other hand, the more you understand, the less motivation you have to learn.
You have less motivation because something is lost when you learn a language. At first it's like beautiful music. And then you start to understand it, and it turns from music into a tool. I ask my students sometimes if they think English is beautiful. Some of them say yes, but they can't explain why. I don't see any beauty in English. For me, it's only a tool.
Only now does it occur to me how the nature of languages differs from that of mathematics. First, unlike language, Russian and German at least, it's not the case that mathematics becomes easier as you go, if anything it's the other way around. Second, like languages, mathematics is also filled with tools, or is a tool itself. Nevertheless parts of it are remarkably beautiful. Furthermore, beauty comes only when you understand mathematics. If you don't understand it, it's complete jibberish, not beautiful music, as may be with languages.