Why Would a Mathematician Want an M.F.A.?

N ot so long ago, had I been asked to free associate with the letters M, F, and A, I would have conjured the words “mass,” “force,” and “acceleration.” After all, as a math professor, I talk about those concepts routinely in my multivariable calculus courses. Now that I’m enrolled in a master-of-fine-arts program, however, I have started associating those three letters with my growth as a writer and my dream to publish a mainstream book.

My transition from mass, force, and acceleration to M.F.A. student has had both expected and unexpected outcomes.

I had always planned to pursue an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing during my retirement. But after I earned promotion to associate professor in 2014, I wanted a new challenge. I had also recently recovered from a serious illness and felt compelled to seize the day. Besides, there had always been a flaw in my original retirement plan: I would only be eligible for free tuition so long as I continued working at the university.

Today I am enrolled in a low-residency M.F.A. program. That means I participate in a weeklong writing retreat at an isolated mountain resort each June and January, followed by a five-month correspondence semester with an individual faculty member. The prospect of stealing away twice a year for a week of solitary writing in a beautiful setting was alluring enough that I forgot to worry about the demands of being a graduate student while teaching full time.

As it turns out, the amount of writing I have to produce in my master’s program — 130 to 150 pages a semester — is more than I had expected. Nonetheless, the volume, pace, and accompanying deadlines have provided an honest window into the writing life and have left me wanting more.

Another surprise (a pleasant one) is that the writing community in my program is more varied than I had anticipated. Although there are a handful of young, recent college graduates in the program who majored in creative writing, I have gravitated to classmates who, like me, took a longer, nontraditional path to the M.F.A. My peers include a retired colonel from the U.S. Army, a former National Security Agency linguist, a former corrections officer, and a South African microbiologist.

My nonfiction writing braids math with personal story. Prior to enrolling in the program, I had been concerned that my future classmates might be of the I-don’t-do-math variety. However, as they provide careful, constructive feedback on my work, I see that it was me, not them, who needed to purge a few stereotypes.

On the practical side, my program is offering me a crash course in mainstream book publishing. I don’t know how successful I will be in marketing my book when it’s done, but it can’t hurt that I have spoken to so many authors, publishers, and literary agents. Who knew that most successful authors have had to rewrite their manuscripts not just once but two, three, or even four times before getting the green light on publication?

As an added and equally unexpected bonus, my enrollment has also heightened my sensitivity as a teacher. I have gained a vivid reminder of the highs and lows of student life: the deadlines that come at inconvenient times, the peer who helps out just in time, the thoughtless comment from a classmate, the homework that must be juggled with out-of-class responsibilities, the sinking feeling when an assignment does not go well, and the joy at even the smallest success. It makes me think that every faculty member should, at some point, have a parallel experience as a student.

Because of my program, I am reading a lot more than usual during the academic year. I had no idea how I would find the time to read and respond to the 10 required books each semester. However, it turns out that those minutes I otherwise would have spent sorting through papers in my office between classes, reading the news on my smartphone, or quite literally waiting for a pot to boil — so that my family might have dinner — add up. And I’ve made use of them. Regardless of how long it takes me to publish my book, I am better for having recovered this lost reading time.

My dual desires to do math and write spring from similar wells. Drafting nonfiction prose — much like writing mathematical proofs — can seem technical and tedious on some days and uplifting on others. The uplifting moments happen in both genres when I discover some beautiful, essential truth. While fleeting, they are enough to carry me through those technical and tedious moments.

“The idea is to write so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart,” Maya Angelou wrote. For me, her comment applies not only to writing prose but to the moment I am able to convey a mathematical argument asserting, for example, the existence of different sizes of infinity. That argument is one I want people to hear in both their brains and their hearts.

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear,” Joan Didion wrote. Her quote captures my motivation for both writing and doing math. I write to discover what the infinitude of primes has to do with my life. I write to discover whether I can see mathematical patterns in human interactions. I write out of a need to find these connections and out of fear that I may not. Writing keeps my fears at bay. Sometimes I even discover a connection.

Ultimately, my pursuit of an M.F.A. feeds off of the same curiosity that drives me as a mathematician. Isaac Newton captured the spirit of my motivation to develop as a writer when he said, “To myself, I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

These days, whether I sit at my desk to do math or write nonfiction, I feel a lot like that child playing on the beach in search of some undiscovered truth.