At twenty-three, I stood in my university’s mathematics department, holding my half-finished PhD thesis.

My supervisor had turned what should have been intellectual growth into a daily exercise in survival.

Each morning brought fresh anxiety.

Would today be the day he’d corner me alone in his office, standing too close while “reviewing” my proofs?

Would my research be dismissed again between comments about my appearance?

The mathematics faded behind a wall of inappropriate personal questions and “friendly” touches that felt anything but professional.

The question haunted me: Was this just part of earning a PhD? Stories circulated through department hallways about other supervisors, other students, other battles. “Everyone goes through this,” they’d say. “Just keep your head down.” The whispered warning of academia’s walking wounded.

But something inside me kept insisting: This isn’t right.

Mathematics taught me that the simplest solution is often correct.

Yet here I was, complicating my life with elaborate justifications for staying.

I left.

The decision felt devastating at the time, like admitting defeat.

What I couldn’t see then, through the fog of self-doubt, was that walking away wasn’t giving up – it was growing up.

Twenty years later, the choice I agonized over seems blindingly obvious.

No degree is worth surrendering your sense of safety.

No academic achievement justifies enduring harassment disguised as mentorship.

The real theorem I proved that day?

Sometimes the bravest calculation is subtraction – removing yourself from a toxic equation.

To that anxious twenty-three-year-old mathematician: your worth isn’t measured by your tolerance for abuse.

Your passion for numbers deserved better than being divided by fear.

In the end, you solved for x perfectly – x being your own self-respect.