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# To the High School Student Who Thinks Math & Poetry Don’t Matter
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/to-the-high-school-student-who-thinks-math-poetry-dont-matter/
- Published: 2024-08-18T16:01:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T20:59:10.000Z
- Description: In my pocket I have access to all the world’s knowledge: calculators, AI, essays, videos to solve any equation. Still, when the vet says 50% chance of permanent paralysis and, though the literature is sparse, a high probability of Myelomalacia—fatal, painful—I am as the hiker who...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

In my pocket I have access to all the world’s knowledge:  
calculators, AI, essays, videos to solve any equation.  
Still, when the vet says 50% chance of permanent paralysis  
and, though the literature is sparse, a high probability of  
Myelomalacia—fatal, painful—I am as the hiker who  
has fallen, leg broken, heat stinging his skin like a swarm  
of wasps, his GPS showing the path to safety but not  
how he is to survive the journey. And here in this  
sterile, fluorescent room, staring at MRI after MRI of  
herniated discs and spinal edema, I am doing my own  
agonizing algebra, weighing the variables of love, of loss,  
of cost, of survivability, of time. What we don’t learn in  
school is why math and poetry matter, why, after  
I understand what there is to understand, I choose to  
hold this whimpering dog as the Propofol flows  
and he slumps in my arms, snoring a deep sleep from  
which he won’t awake. Or why, flipping through dog-  
eared textbooks, nowhere do I learn that I did the right  
thing or wrong thing, only that at the end of the paved road  
is a wilderness where life is its most tender and complete.

*RIP Justice, Wednesday, August 14, 2024*