Late to the party but wanted to share my experience. I was an Applied Math major at Berkely. Why? When I was in 7th grade, I had an old school Russian math te

Late to the party but wanted to share my experience. I was an Applied Math major at Berkely. Why? When I was in 7th grade, I had an old school Russian math teacher. She was tough, not one for niceties, but extremely fair. One day, being the typical smart ass that I was, I said, why the hell do I need to do this, I have 0 interest in Geometry. Her answer completely changed my outlook and eventually was the reason why I took extensive math in HS and majored in math in college. Instead of dismissing me, instead of just telling me to shut up and sit down, she explained things to me very calmly. She said doing math beyond improving your math skills improves your reasoning ability. It's a workout for your brain and helps develop your logical thinking. Studying it now at a young age will help it become part of your intuition so that in the future you can reason about complex topics that require more than a moment's thoughts. She really reached me on that day, took me a while to realize it. Wish I could have said thank you. Wherever you are Ms. Zavesova, thank you. Other beneits: doing hard math really builds up your tolerance for building hard problems. Reasoning through long problems, trying and failing, really requires a certain kind of stamina. My major definitely gave me this. I am a product manager now and while I don't code, I have an extremely easy time working with engineers to get stuff done.