Math! And Writing, to a Lesser Extent. (Exploring Flow, Part 1)

I adore math!!! For the last few months I had pondered one possible future as an event planner. This week I'm giving serious rumination to the idea of going back to school to become a statistician.

I am a nerd. I have nerdy appetites. Two nights ago I got to take a little taste of my husband's physics homework. It was delicious. I did well.

When I focus on moving numbers around on a piece of paper the world simplifies, my little inner demons shut up and the scattered gears floating around in my brain suddenly click into place. There is minimal rote memorization (!!!) but I still get to chew my way through ideas as large as my mind can handle. It's satisfying.

I love writing for most of the same reasons, but math trumps writing by a tiny little bit because all numbers are fit for public consumption.

Writing well for a public audience requires cultural savvy and delicate self-censorship. I can enjoy this process too, but it's stressful. My country is at war. American culture is full of cruelty. The internet is a strange place. American newspapers are falling apart. What's left of the publishing industry is fickle. My political opinions are quite political, occasionally experimental and often controversial. I do plan to churn out a few novels eventually and I am writing right now, but unless Marvel scoops me up Prince Charming-style and pays me to breathe new life into sagging franchises (a girl can dream...) I think writing is more likely to be a side dish than a main course.

I do believe that the Master of Science in Experimental Psychology that I'd been groomed for as an undergrad student would qualify me for work as a statistician. It would also provide me with the increasingly rare opportunity to perform at least two more years of experimental human-subject behavioral research, which is about as fun as eating candy.

I think I'd want to take additional, elective math courses if I enrolled in that program. Maybe minor in math or complete a statistics-related post-graduate certificate.

I wonder what companies would hire me with a stats-heavy MS in Experimental Psychology? I would love to work in the video game industry or for the right market research firm or quite possibly in public health research. I need to think about this some more.