Last Word: Zijian Diao

Would you rather live in the past or in the future? I would rather live in the future, because I believe the future is better. It’s more adventurous, because I don’t have a good idea of what to expect. But if we’re living in the past, we know quite a bit obviously and we can sort of know what happens in what era you have to live in. I would rather leave it open.

If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be? I want to see the future. Then, I won’t be surprised when I have to live in the future.

How far in the future would you live if you had to choose? The farther the better!

How do you relax? From childhood, I actually have [a] habit of drinking tea. So, [when] I relax, I will brew a really nice cup of tea, and I will just slowly drink it.

What’s your favorite word? This question is a little tricky because I am bilingual.  A few years ago, a student did tell me that I use the word “straightforward” a lot in the lectures, like “this step is straightforward” and “this problem has a straightforward solution.”  To me, the kind of math we teach students is indeed straightforward, as long as they understand the reasoning behind it. It is a totally different story if we are talking about competition math or the frontier of mathematical research, though.

What is your greatest fear? I actually cannot think of anything that I really fear. I’m fearless!

What was your favorite subject in school when you were a kid? I was trained by my father to be really good at Chinese classics since I was four years, five years old. He used to write. He used…pens with a kind of hair, and he would dip it in ink. He used that to write poems published [from] the Tang Dynasty that [reaches] back more than 1,000 years. He would copy down all those poems, and I … would just recite everything. I really enjoyed it. Sometimes my parents would make me recite those poems when we had guests. I enjoyed Chinese [work] most, basic literature, and poems. Then, it started to shift as I was ten years old, [when] math became my favorite subject.

Did your family have any traditions growing up? We would do the things all Chinese families do. Like, when there are holidays. The New Year [is] the biggest. So, at the eve of New Year would have a big dinner. The day after, all the kids would go out and we played with firecrackers. It’s probably not legal in the States, but in China whatever age you are, four or five years old, you can just buy a bunch of crackers and hold them in your hands, and you fire it up wherever you want!

What is the best thing about your job? The best thing [about] my job is freedom. So, I think that’s really the big draw when people choose a career of being in academia. Being a professor is actually a very unique profession. Let’s say for example that you work for a company, then there are layers and layers of bureaucratic structure forced on top of you, and everybody’s a nut in a machine. Everybody is simply replaceable. But in academia … it’s the faculty who really runs the university. It’s [we] who carry out the cognition of the university.