> I just wish people could forget the idea that Math is fun. It is not. It's interesting, but it's not fun and can be totally counter intuitive, thus there is n

> I just wish people could forget the idea that Math is fun. It is not. It's interesting, but it's not fun and can be totally counter intuitive, thus there is no "fun" way to demonstrate it. (Disclosure: I haven't read the OP, or the rest of your post really beyond this sentence. I skimmed.) (Double disclosure: I too am in high school.) An emphasis on "fun" is one of the most misleading concepts in trying to get people to pay attention. Some things can be gamified, others well...not so much. (See: Educational games: The bane of every elementary school kids existence.) In a way it's almost profane. Trying to make things interesting by making them fun when the underlying concept is already interesting. It's just that you have to focus on it in a small picture, so it makes it hard to see the bigger concepts that it's a part of. (Objectively I know that if I read through mathematics texts long enough it gets non-trivial and interesting, but actually doing that is so painful as to be impossible. (Impossible in the "I see no way to do it." sense of the word.)) Objectively I also know that I'll be mediocre at any sort of CS effort until I take the plunge. Still not motivating. Other things are just too distracting. I almost feel I should just unplug my Ethernet cable and hide it until I emerge a hacker.