 So I'm a math teacher. I took a weird path to get here. I got a philosophy degree because I couldn't decide what to learn about for the rest of my life. I think everything is awesome. So I'm going to try to convince you guys that everything is awesome. Also, even though I ended up taking jobs that paid less and less and less, because I couldn't specialize in anything, nonetheless, it's true. Everything is awesome. OK, go. So you may think, come on, is everything awesome? I mean, some things are complicated. Some things are ugly. Are those things also awesome? Yes, yes they are. So there are two basic ways we can react when we see something weird. We can be like Sam the Eagle. We can say this is weird and therefore bad. Or we can be like Gonzo and say this is weird and therefore interesting. So today I will argue that everyone should be like Gonzo. So first I should tell you about schemas. Schemas are the way we organize the world. They're like categories or generalizations. They're kind of rules of thumb. They tell us how the world works. We can't do without them and we don't really need to. We just need to be careful. So for example, if one of your schemas is the girls are bad at math, you can end up thinking like this. You take in new evidence, but it just confirms what you already believe. So when you're using your current schemas to evaluate your current schemas, how do you know when you need to revise them? It's actually really hard. My favorite analogy ever is the figuring out how the world works is like fixing your ship while you're at sea. You can't pull it out of the water and see which planks are rotten. You just have to use the ones that seem more solid while you replace the other ones. This is difficult and complicated work, and it can be emotionally painful also. So if it's not work that we enjoy doing, we won't do it. So that brings me back to weirdness. If you like thinking about things that don't already fit into your picture of how the world works, you'll spend more time working on your schemas, and you'll have a better time doing it. This is why learning is so difficult. Fitting new things into your existing picture of the world can be really complicated and painful. We don't want our students to feel the way this baby does, especially about math. And math can involve really weird and difficult concepts. So it's important for students to react well to weirdness. For example, this beautiful thing. We want students to look at something like this and say, oh, that's amazing. What does that mean? We don't want them to look at that and say, oh, what is that? I can't even. So if you like thinking about weird new stuff, you'll do the hard work that's required for learning. So we need to model the right reaction to weirdness, the gonzo reaction. We need to model this for everybody, not just students. So look for opportunities to rethink your ideas about the world, any part of the world, not just the mathematical parts. Be excited about revising your schemas. This is bigger than school. Not only is it harder to learn when you don't like thinking about weird stuff, it's also easier to exclude possibilities and thereby to exclude people. So take gender, please. It's not just binary. It's not just a set of discrete boxes that people can fit into. It's this big n-dimensional spectrum in which a person's location might not be fixed or even precise. Humans are complicated. And if you try to simplify them because you don't like thinking about complicated stuff, you exclude people who don't fit. Speaking of exclusion, intersectionality is also really complicated. People belong to groups that overlap. And the interests of those groups affect each other and kind of depend on each other. And it's really hard to think through the implications of all this stuff. But if we enjoy thinking about it, if we embrace the weird and the complicated and the new, then we don't just give up when the going gets tough. We do the work we need to do to make the world a more just place for everyone. And we revise our ideas as needed. If you embrace the weird, you also embrace actions that are weird, doing things you've never done before. This can give you the extra motivation you need to do difficult and scary things, like protesting or talking to your representatives or even running for office or starting an organization. All those things are hard and weird. And therefore, yeah. Let's say you don't care about truth or justice or exclusion. Even if you're totally selfish, you should want to embrace the weird. You can figure out new things about yourself by learning about unfamiliar things. I'm even more awesome than I thought I was. For example, that's me at the Seattle Pride Parade last month. I thought something was wrong with me for a really long time until I learned about a possibility that I never knew existed. If I wasn't curious, then I might never have found out about that. So now I know more about myself because I wanted to learn more about weird stuff. So here's the moral of the story. Be like Gonzo. Embrace the weird. Revise your schemas. It's good for you. It's good for everyone whose life you touch. Teach your students to embrace the weird. Teach everyone around you to embrace the weird. And I'm going to leave you with a quote from Gene Rottenberry. If we can't learn to not just tolerate the differences we find in each other, but to actually delight in them. If we can at least do that on earth, then we don't deserve to go to the stars and meet the diversity out there. And if we don't embrace the weird, we probably won't have the knowledge or maturity as a species that we need in order to get out to the stars in the first place. Therefore, everything is awesome. One more slide. Hang on a second. There we go.