I really don't know what to say, because the people who came before me were so well prepared and I didn't prepare.

Anything. So I think the first thing I want to tell you is to not listen to anything I say.

Among many reasons for that. You know, old people give all kinds of advice that's unrealistic, useless.

So you should all take it in stride, in your own way.

Furthermore, my memory is very bad, especially if I'm thinking about when I was young and even the things I remember.

I tend to turn them into a story that's maybe very far from reality.

I tend not to think that the trajectory of life is really a story, but I turn it into a story anyways.

So I will tell you a little bit of a story.

So Ravi mentioned earlier that all mathematicians are a little bit atypical.

Maybe all humans are atypical. You have your own way of living and growing up and learning and so on.

And probably the most atypical thing about me is I didn't go to school after primary school.

I quit school very soon after primary school, and then until I entered the university, I did whatever I wanted.

So it was kind of a curious environment because my parents actually were both academics.

They were professors of literature,.

But they didn't really give me any direction or anything.

I was just left to do whatever I want.

So as a result, my learning was very haphazard.

I didn't know anything very systematically.

I read whatever I wanted, listen to music.

I wanted to be a composer.

At some point I wrote some music and.

And then another time I wanted to be a singer.

So a combination of being distracted from by one thing after the other.

Right. But mathematics in particular, I think I was quite poor at before entering university, because even though.

You can all learn mathematics in your own way, probably you have enough experience to know that it does take some discipline,.

Right?

You have to sit down. You have to learn, at least have some basic skills, solve a lot of problems and so.

Forth that is involved in getting good at mathematics.

I didn't do any of that, so I was extremely bad.

So when I entered university,.

My first selection of a major was philosophy.

I entered the philosophy department.

Then I quit after three weeks.

So I'm very good at quitting school, even at the university.

After three weeks I resigned and then took the entrance exam again the next year.

I don't know if you know about it, but I grew up in South Korea where these university entrance exams are extremely.

Stressful affairs. They people just go crazy about these entrance exams.

It's a terrible thing. But anyways, without too much thought to that, I just quit university, decided to take it again.

And then the next year I applied for mathematics and mathematics and physics.

But I didn't get into physics.

But I did get into mathematics.

Fortunately,.

Now.

We were supposed to say a little bit about what attracted us to mathematics, and I think my honest answer might be.

Maybe nothing,.

I don't know. I don't know if I was particularly attracted to mathematics at that time.

So why did I choose it as a major?

And the answer to that, even though I'm making up stories, I can remember fairly clearly from this period when I was.

Young,.

I did realize that it was necessary.

So I told you that I started out in philosophy and people may do many different things with philosophy.

People ask different kinds of questions about the nature of knowledge, about the nature of language.

Some people are close to religion and there's many different kinds of philosophy.

But I was interested. I do remember thinking, I'm interested in the world itself.

I'm not so interested in introspection.

I'm interested in understanding the world that surrounds me.

And that was what I thought philosophy would be like.

But I very soon found out that that wasn't.

It was very hard to do that.

Somehow in philosophy, it's probably possible.

It wasn't easy. And I realized, in fact, especially in the modern world, in order to understand the world around us.

What do you need? You definitely need mathematics.

That was a feeling I had even at that stage, so I decided I have to do so.

I have to do some mathematics.

Anyways, I didn't know where I would take it, by the way.

At that time I didn't know if I was going to be a mathematician.

I actually thought I might become a school teacher.

That was one of the things that was in my mind as a possible profession, but I definitely had no idea how.

Far I would take it. I had no sense if I was especially good or not, but I felt like it was.

Forced on you if you wanted to learn something about the world.

And that's true, right? I think most of you have some experience with this already.

For example, some of you might be interested in other aspects of science physics.

For example, you might read about black holes or quantum mechanics or cosmology, all these wonderful things, right?

So you can read about these things in a popular book like Stephen Hawking wrote a famous book called A Brief History.

Of Time, I think. Right, history of time.

That sounds like a wonderful subject.

Right. But then as soon as you go below the surface, you realize there's so much mathematics that you need in order.

To understand this. Right? So these are these are the kind of experiences where you feel like eventually mathematics is forced on.

You. And that's where I was when I was making this decision.

And for many years afterwards. Mathematics is something that will help me understand the world.

I think that's where I still am by and large, compared to the other speakers, I still feel like I'm not very.

Talented at mathematics. Right. And again, even now, I can't say I'm exactly attracted to it.

Of course I am. Since all these years you get used to something and you enjoy it, of course.

So it's an aspect is sometimes it's very, very hard, sometimes it's enjoyable.

And of course, it's wonderful to work with other mathematicians and learn a lot of things from that.

Of course, that's all wonderful, but even now it's mostly as a critical tool for understanding the world that I think about.

Mathematics. Right?

I've been drifting from one thing to another, even as a mathematician, of course, over the years.

I should admit, by the way, that even after I started my PhD program, I thought once of going back to philosophy.

So I went and spoke to a very famous philosopher in my university, and he immediately put me off.

I couldn't talk to him. Somehow it didn't work, so I decided to stick with mathematics.

I'm glad I did. But curiously, among the different ways I distract myself, I also like to popularize mathematics in some way.

I write a lot of books for the general public.

I've written 15 so far. That's a bit of a show off.

But.

Anyways,.

And my current project very curiously, it's very interesting.

I found it interesting. Anyways, I received a proposal from a publisher.

Won't you write a book with a title like A Mathematician Reads Philosophy?

So that's what I'm writing right now.

So somehow this kind of interaction with philosophy seems to be continuing.

I also like to learn about physics, economics, many of the ways in which mathematics is used in the world.

So I drift from one thing to another.

Don't concentrate very well on any single problem.

That's probably different from any of the other people that you spoke.

From my point of view, they are really superhuman in their powers of concentration.

All the other people in this room, all the other mathematicians, you know, I'm not very good at it.

I think if I have one little bit of a strength of some sort, I'm not good at concentrating any given time,.

But I do tend to return to the same concepts over many years, learning little by little and maybe getting better and.

Better at it through this process.

Right? So maybe that's one way of compensating for your inability to concentrate.

So I'm admitting this right now because as several of the other people mentioned, mathematicians come in all types,.

Many different people with many different strengths and weaknesses.

So I'm just laying my weaknesses out in the open so you can see that you can.

There are many ways of doing.

Of course, you do need to make a career of some sort.

You need to have publications. You need to do some minimal things to make sure that you can make a living as.

A mathematician. But many different kinds of people can make a living, right?

Especially if you have a resilient mindset about the way you want to live your life.

And as again, many people mentioned, Ravi made a big point of this.

Mathematics is very international, right? So you meet people, you go to places and you live in many different places.

So that's a little bit of a distinction maybe I have as well.

I've worked in many different institutions in Korea, in the US and in the UK.

So while preparing this talk again, I'm sorry, this is a little bit of showing off my credentials as well.

I realized that I've had professorships in ten different universities, so it's possible to sort of move around a lot and experience.

Different environments. And that's a wonderful thing about doing mathematics.

I don't know where I wanted to take this speech other than sharing with you this story that I'm making up about.

The trajectory of my life. Right.

So.

I think there was this bit about what advice I would give to myself, right?

If I were to myself as a 15 to 20 year old.

And of course, the short answer is no advice, no advice.

I don't know how to advise young people, right?

Everybody has to find their own way.

In some sense, I do tend to tend my own children.

There is one bit of advice I do give them, right?

It's not specifically about how to study, how to do mathematics and so forth.

Actually, both of them did end up doing things that are rather quantitative, right?

My older son is doing a PhD in computer science.

The younger son is doing a PhD in economics.

So somehow they did go into things that are somehow close to mathematics, but I don't think I ever encouraged them in.

Any way. Somehow it did work out that way.

But the advice that I do give them, when the occasion seems to be reasonable,.

Is to remind them that the world.

You know, I told you that I like to understand the world, that sort of the driving force of my own pursuit.

Of academics, objectives, other aspects of relating or of relating to the world and living in it.

The world itself is a pretty generous place.

I think that is a bit of advice that I would like to give.

So sometimes it's not so easy to see it, especially when you're having a hard time.

You might be having a hard time at school.

Eventually you might actually become a mathematician and your career might not be going so well.

There are many different obstacles that can present themselves to you in life, but overall, over a long period of time, I.

Think the world is a pretty generous place.

So it's okay to relax.

Okay, thank you very much.