By Benjy Berkowitz ’18, Staff Writer

As a student trying to stay hip with the times, I’ve heard many different things said in passing conversations while walking through the halls of Newark Academy. For example, I’ll hear the daily “Golly, I sure do love school,” or “I really can’t get enough of this school thing.” But while in my math class, trying to better my math skills, I could not help overhearing a concerning conversation between two classmates (who will remain nameless for security purposes). The conversation went like this:

Person 1: “When are we every going to use math besides in school?”

Person 2: “Never.”

With these very words ringing in my ears, I spent the rest of the class pondering the question, Am I ever going to use math outside of school? I struggled for awhile, failing to conjure up a response that would satisfy my need for answers. And just when I thought I was out of ideas, on the brink of an existential crisis, I thought of one scenario – a scenario so inevitable, clear and thorough that I do not think I will ever question my math education again. The scenario goes like this (paint a picture in your brain, as they say): you are in New York City late on a Tuesday night coming home from a concert of your favorite band. You loved the concert and stayed to the very end. You see an alley that would act as the perfect short cut home. Your brain tells you No that’s not safe but your legs are tired from standing in the wild crowd of the concert, so your legs retort, pleading Please take the short cut we are soo tired. You give in like a crumpled piece of paper – a weak, crumpled piece of paper. Nothing bad could come of it right? Wrong.

You enter the alley and suddenly, a hooded figure appears, holding some sort of dangerous object. You panic and freeze in your tracks. The figure approaches. In a raspy voice they utter, “I won’t hurt you if you tell me the quadratic equation.” You stand there in shock. “Wh-What?” you stutter. “The quadratic equation, give it to me.” “I-I don’t know it” you say in shock. After your test in 10^th grade, you thought you would never need that long, boring equation ever again. But you were wrong, you do need it. You need it right now. But you don’t know it. The figure starts to approach you, calculator in one hand, protractor in the other. At that point, I stopped imagining this gruesome hypothetical situation because I had proved my point to myself. I knew that math may not help you everyday, but what if, just what if, you are walking down a dark alley after your favorite band performs a wild concert and an armed figure approaches asking what the quadratic formula is, and you do not know it? Well, I crunched the numbers, and those aren’t chances I would want to take. So next time you find yourself in that situation, just remember x=-b+ the square root of something. I’m not really sure. Math is hard.