Dearest Reader

Dearest Reader,

After coming back to this page after months away, I realise that perhaps we have gotten off on the wrong foot. My first couple of blogs seem to be written when I was in emo-mode, which is a state of mind I get in when I feel that I’m not very important. This feeling is usually brought on by seeing somebody do something a lot better than me. This is not an uncommon thing. Anyways, I shall start fresh! Let me introduce myself and what I do, and perhaps my perspective will coincide somewhat with yours and we will develop some sort of weird internet connection. Or perhaps you will laugh at me. I suppose I am about to write a biography of some sort. Rather I am just going to write a lot of facts that probably don’t flow too well. Feel free to click the cross at the top right-hand of the screen.

I was born in Port Hedland, Western Australia, on the 28th of September 1989. My birth certificate claims that my parents are Angela Lloyd (Financial Analyst) and Janusz Dudek (Senior Research Engineer). My mum is now remarried as Angela McGuinness and I do not see my Dad anymore. I am the 4th oldest out of 9 siblings, which probably sounds like a lot. It is.

My family moved to Perth when I was very young, where we lived in the northern suburb of Sorrento. I attended Our Lady of Grace Primary School, a private catholic school. I was forced to attend church on a weekly basis and believe the bible. My parents were divorced and we struggled financially, and I found it difficult to be the poor kid at the rich private school. Later in primary school I made the change to public schools and absolutely loved it. I made friends easily and the classes were much more relaxed, educationally and socially. I found that I had natural ability when it came to mathematics and music. I played the baritone for a couple of years until I realised I didn’t like it.

I finished off primary school and started at Warwick Senior High School. This was a school with an overall poor academic performance, and a reputation for breeding troublemakers. My mum originally gave me the choice, and it was  either Sacred Heart College or Warwick Senior High School. I stand by my decision.

Early in year 8, I took on the vacant position as the class clown and made friends with people who acted as silly as I did. We got lots of attention, most of it negative, but we could conjur up a good laugh now and then. The teachers pulled me aside frequently and tried to convince me to focus on my schoolwork, as I was the only one in the group who still got good test results. In fact I dominated the whole year group. But I was having so much fun!

When I was around 14 years old I started going out at night and starting trouble. My group would just roam the streets drinking and mucking around. This sounds really juvenile when I read this, and well, it is. I mean we just did some stupid things. I basically carried on like an idiot from years 8-10, but my life changed amazingly in year 11.

My parents had put me into TEE maths, physics and chemistry, the subjects they felt I would do well in. At the beginning of the year I met a girl with whom I developed a friendship with. I wasn’t interested in her at first but she seemed nice and after a couple of weeks we were, to put it into year 11 terms, “going out”. Anyway, I won’t go into detail here (though EVERYBODY asks me to tell them the story) but she turned out to be crazy, my life fell into pieces, and I ended up running away from home. The running away from home thing only lasted a week (a valiant effort and improvement on the half an hour when I was 5) but it was perhaps the most messed up and emotional week of my life. But anyways something good actually came from it.

When me and her parted, I returned home and I just remember sitting there in my room just thinking “ok, what now?”. I had just wasted months of my life. Me and my friends had fallen out during this time. I was failing my year 11 TEE subjects. However, I felt so calm, like nothing could possibly go wrong now. So I started studying. My marks began to soar. I mean, seriously, every test I did from then on was above 95%. The teachers were astonished, and I couldn’t really believe it either. They didn’t know where it had come from. Neither did I really. I actually developed a great appreciation for all things maths and science. I made new friends, with similiar interests. Life really started to pick up and I really started to love it. I enjoyed studying maths and physics as much as I enjoyed getting top marks. I suppose I hadn’t felt personal achievement in a long time but it was an amazing feeling.

I carried on through year 12 and got an outstanding TER with subject awards in Calculus, Applicable Maths and Physics. I also started to write and record music as an outlet, recording an album worth of material by the end of year 12. Many of the songs can be found on the internet.

 I enrolled to study mathematics at UWA, which I am still extremely passionate about. I finished off my undergraduate degree last year and I am currently in my honours year, and to this day I am still really into maths. I suppose I had just never seen it properly before, then when I was alone and reading. I also started playing soccer in my university years and I am currently captain of the Youth Development squad for a local team.

Considering all the stupid things I did when I was young I feel that I am pretty lucky to be doing this. I look at all my friends in year 8 and all of them except one have completely messed up their lives. I sort of look back and think “phew, close call”.

Anyways, this is a pretty mediocre summary of my life, and I think the main point was to emphasise what got me into mathematics and study. Now that you know where I’m coming from, and I’ve got all of that into the open, I might be able to start writing blogs more regularly. That’s the plan.

Adrian.