primeideal

I created this journal on January 10, 2012. I'm not exactly sure what prompted me to do so--I wound up making an Ao3 account shortly after, to crosspost fic and comment on an amazing Yuletide fic for a tiny fandom I'd just read--but there I was.

On other sites, I was/am "Ember Nickel," but I felt like I needed a change, so I went with "prime ideal." I had just encountered that concept in my abstract algebra textbook, it refers to a certain type of set. (The classic example is "multiples of a certain prime number X, with respect to all the integers." So if X=5, then the set {5, 10, 15, 20... 0, -5, -10...} within the larger set {...-2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3...} because 5 is prime.)

Plus it just sounded cool. Like...idealism. And "prime" as in "important," like that thing from Star Trek. (I'm not into Star Trek.)

Fast forward 7 years, and I'm proud to say that now I have a PhD in math. And yes, some of my research worked on prime ideals in algebra!

I'm not staying in academia, but I'm amused by the way that worked out. Subconscious bias directing me down this path since it's a part of my virtual identity? Maybe.

(I have a long essay/ramble coming soon, but I've been wanting to share this for a while, just got distracted by other stuff.)