Context
I love math, and I love learning. My passions lie in math, physics and computers. Obsessively I pursue programming in my free time, building servers, bots, applications, games. My major is physics because the questions about how this reality works is motivating and I can run particle simulation on computers.
Math keeps pulling the short straw of my interests, but I have faith that it has fruit to bear. I took a proof class this quarter and received a C-, so I have to take it again. I mostly blame myself and the impersonal structure of the American school system ( maybe all school systems ).
Conflict
I need more motivation in order to apply the proper amount of rigor into mathematics. Motivation can come a few ways from love or fear.
- Fear of failing school ( a large financial investment )
- Love of mathematical ideas
- Love of mathematical applications
When I ask passionate people about their interests I have some people who open up and give me a torch from their burning fire. These people I appreciate and they motivate me in wondrous ways into unanticipated subjects. I have met several physicists and only one mathematician that inspired me like this. That mathematician insisted that math is worthwhile to learn. That was enough for sometime, but at this critical turning point in my life I am obligated to ask, why?
The Question
I have looked at the similar questions, this one is unique because I am asking about methods of motivations. The passionate people who are out there, please shed some light on why math is worth pursuing. Let it be the end goal ( absolute truth ), a specific idea ( Hilbert space is cool ), a delicious book ( Godel Escher Bach ), I want to hear!
What is interesting about math?
What resource can you give to me to better invoke that interest?
Thank you