Why Do You Like Math?

[robvalue]

I keep forgetting that I'm a math teacher now. Still haven't gotten quite used to the idea. Many of my students hate math, and I consider it my personal mission to convince them that it is great.

One thing I have to say though, what you encounter under the name of Mathematics in high school is not yet quite the real deal. The real thing is much better,  grander than I can grasp, goes deeper than I can imagine, and never seems to end. I could spend the rest of my life exploring algebra, differential geometry and algebraic topology, maybe even prove some new theorems, and wouldn't get bored. It's insane. It's like this infinite elegant architecture that we just find lying before us.

I agree!

I understand it up to a certain point, but then I just shrug my shoulders. I know some things are a certain way, but I haven't the foggiest why. I know you're "allowed" to do certain things, but I couldn't begin to explain. I've seen a couple of proofs of these kind of things before, and they were massively complicated to the extreme and weren't required for the exam. We actually had a stand-in guy for one of the lectures and I don't think he understood it either. He was just copying it all off a piece of paper and couldn't answer my questions very well.