Work Text:
Numbers had always been his thing.
Sure, he was quite talented at other things too. For one, his taste in music was great; he had an ear for classical tunes. He also semi-liked reading. Though never having been a literature enthusiast, there were a few piles of classic books on his shelves that he hadn’t had the heart to throw away just yet. Every once in a while, he picked out one of them, read a page or two and put it back in its place.
All his books were ordered in a perfect row: Left were the thick books, some of which were passed down by his grandparents. They had an outstanding taste for literature, akin to his likings. On the right were the thin books, mostly consisting of schoolbooks. There was tiny layer of dust on them, much less in comparison to the layer on the ancient lectures.
He didn’t use his schoolbooks a lot these days; for one, he had gone digital with all his paperwork. Though being a rather organized person, the mess that paper could create even under good maintenance had bothered him immensely since the dawn of time. The other reason was his finished student career. These books had served their purpose more than enough.
He didn’t really know or didn’t want to admit why he kept onto his schoolbooks, since the time period of his life that they came from hadn’t been the best one. By no means did he hate school, otherwise he wouldn’t have become a teacher. It was just the feeling of unwillingness to step outside of bed every morning, dreading the fact that in an hour he had to be at a place filled with undisciplined, immature little children that have never heard the word "respect" before. But no, he definitely enjoyed working as a teacher. Or better said: a lecturer.
He didn’t like interacting with his students, found it rather time-consuming and instead just taught what he had to for an hour and left promptly afterwards.
He was aware of it going into his profession, and he had been through years of experiencing it, but getting used to all the students and their nagging and their noise and their unbelievable incompetence when it came to his taught subject was infuriating. And a bit demotivating if he were honest to himself.
But the thing that was actually hurting his feelings was the constant degrading remarks of the students, the demeaning comments, actively spatting insults of the profession he had dedicated his life to right into his face, turning all the rage for their failings on him. They acted as if he had personally invented the “difficult” topics of his subject. What was his fault in all of this? He only did his job, and if these children couldn’t follow him, then so be it. His generous patience had run dry a long time ago.
On the other hand, there were a few short-lived moments in his class where he felt appreciated, felt as if he were back at school as his younger student self, laughing with his classmates. Though he would force himself to never think back to these moments. They were just a mere waste of time that he could’ve spent calculating his so beloved numbers.
Oh, he had so much talent for mathematics. Everything followed a set of rules that couldn’t be broken, logical equations that would never fail him, demean him, or change when he wasn’t looking. They would never change. Never.
It was a world in which he had infinite possibilities, infinite ways to go, infinite directions for his mind to drift off to. But no matter how much he drifts off, the destination will always be the same as the beginning, as if he had never wandered at all.
Numbers gave him reassurance, for they, and therefore he, could not be swayed, a universal truthful set of 10 numerals and a handful of arithmetic operators were enough for all things to be described. Truly fascinating. It kept him up at night, thinking about equations that he couldn’t solve so easily. It formed his whole day, calculating the hours away, distracting him from the people behind his back, watching every form, every line, every number that he scrambled on the blackboard.
Mathematics is reliable, unlike these books he kept for years on end on his stupid shelf, organized by size, wasting space, waiting until he would throw them out already. Mathematics is objective, constant, never-changing, unlike art.
Oh, how he despised art nowadays. More specific: Graphic design. One other talent he possessed was drawing. When he was younger, his parents saw his outstanding skills in the artistic field and put him into an art school, the same school he taught at today. Quite an irony if he thought about it. He didn’t really know why he went back there. He hadn’t protested when his family told him he was going there, at that point still not sure of his life’s course. He doesn’t really believe in God, but oh Lord, thank him for bringing him to the realization that numbers were all that he needed, not those useless little drawings and designs.
He wasn't quite convinced of the world-changing effects that graphic design had made, but of those that he is aware of, he knew were rather new and hadn’t been a thing when he had been a student. And for all progression graphic design had brought society, mathematics had brought a hundred times more than that.
Looking back, he should have never attended that school. It had been a waste of time and resources. It had challenged his brain in zero ways compared to how mathematics got his internal cogs working. It was stupid.
But he still kept his schoolbooks.
When somebody asked him about it, he would brush it off and answer that he didn’t know why he had them on his shelf.
Though he always knew why : he didn’t want to let go of the past.