How to Make it Through Calculus (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Through it, I have a, I have a— I don’t quite call it elevated to the level of a parable, but it’s a story in my life that I reference all the time. Right now, I share it with you as short.

I’m in high school, I’m a junior in high school and I want to take calculus. Now, if you didn’t know, calculus is way different—way more different from algebra than algebra is from arithmetic. Okay? So, whatever took you to get from arithmetic to algebra, what’s X? What number is it? What could be any number? How could it be any number? It’s in the equation; it’s got to be a number.

These are the transitions from arithmetic to algebra. The transition from algebra to calculus is more complicated. Okay? So that’s why it’s generally not taught in high school; it’s a college thing. And even then, you wouldn’t necessarily have it.

So, I’m handed the calculus book, and I opened a page in the front cover. There are these equations, and they’re using squiggly lines I had never seen before. Half the Greek alphabet is in there. I said, “I don’t know what this is!” Oh, and I said, “I will never learn this!” That’s what I said; that’s how I felt. I said this, but I need to know this because the universe is speaking this language.

I’m screaming at you. Sorry, the sound levels! Okay, sorry. You’re excited, this is great! You started this? Yes? Alright, so I said, “Alright, one step at a time.” After the first week of class, I took a peek—still nothing. After three weeks, and a month, I opened up the side of the book and said, “Hey, I know that equation! I used that the other day. That’s good, I like that!”

As the weeks went on, it was as though this fog began to dissipate. It didn’t lift because that implies you now see, you didn’t, and now you do. It just dissipated; it became more and more transparent. By month three, month four, every one of these equations became my friends. Hmm. I said, “I want them; give me more.”

And that is my measure of what I need to do. If I encounter something which in that moment I do not understand, is that any worse than you coming upon a book of Mandarin and you don’t know any Chinese characters? Yeah, I don’t know any of this, yeah, except one and a half billion people in the world speak it, so it can’t be impossible to learn.

So, you put in the time and slowly some of the characters unravel— that means a human or that’s a home or that’s food. And all of a sudden, the characters start making sense. It’s not really any different from that.

Too many people think that they got to know something instantly in order to ever be good at it. Rather than wanting to achieve something, realize there are these hurdles, work at it, and every bit of yourself you invest helps to dissipate that fog.

Mm-hmm. And the more badly you want to get there, the more you will work to dissipate that fog. Mmm. And that’s what happened to me, and I’ve invoked that ever since. Yeah. And Brandon, the love with that— yeah, badly want to get there! And what’s going to keep you going?

Yeah, and don’t hesitate to ask for help. Oh, I’ve been telling my mother! Okay, I’ve tutored people in my life in physics and in math. I’ve been tutored.