it’s all in your head

I never thought I would have such a desire for mathematics textbooks.

I stepped out of class on Monday night as one of the other teachers approached me, arm out-stretched toward me with a cell phone. “It’s for you,” she says. Slightly odd, seeing as I’ve never talked to this teacher, so I can’t really imagine who would call me through her phone. After a couple minutes of trying to figure out why this phone has found it’s way to my ear, I find it to be one of the students, requesting a tutoring session from 6-7pm for him and his friends. I am now a tutor-on-demand in the midst of students with an insatiable yearning for some learning.

To catch you up on my typical day, my mornings have since opened up as I’ve dropped the 10-11am tutoring due to nobody showing up, though I’ll probably still go over to the school most mornings. Otherwise, I can probably be found plugged into the internet somewhere scouring the internet for a refresher on whatever math concepts I’m being drilled with lately. My afternoons have gotten pretty solid, with the 3-4 math session, my 4-5 Powerpoint class, and now two math sessions from 5-7. The 3-4 session has been a pretty consistent handful of folks, a couple in 11 or 12th grade and some post-high school that seem to just desire to learn more math. The 5-6 has just been a couple guys from my Powerpoint class that stick around with some questions, though the language barrier has proven most difficult as they struggle to express their questions. Lastly, 6-7 are my math-by-request group of friends, about 6 guys that managed to stump me last night with a problem:

Any thoughts? Shoot me an email, I’m hoping I’ll remember. They have sheets of fun stuff like this; I’ve been prolonging the derivative questions until I can refresh myself on those.

“When the excellence of God’s glory echoes in the affections of God’s
scholar and resounds through his creating and speaking and writing,
God’s aim for Christian scholarship is advanced.” [2]

Of course, in the midst of exhausting countless dry-erase markers on limits, sequences, radians, geometry, and derivatives, I can’t help but stop and ask….why? Is this what I signed up for? Is this doing any good? Am I really helping anybody? Did I really abandon the math education major path and come to the other side of the world to…teach math?

The short answer? Yes.

Lately I’ve been working through God’s call upon my mind. I like analyzing and working through problems, chewing on each step, pulling in different pieces and putting them together to find a solution. I have this BA in Mathematics sitting in my back pocket, with it’s future application a large question mark. I enjoy things that most people don’t enjoy, and can figure out things that some people would rather not. It’s been neat to get in and teach some math, forcing myself to keep considering that as an option, as it has been for a long time. I am far from any decisions (heck, it’s month 2), but I signed up for this to chew on these big issues of “calling” and “gifting” and “passions.” God has designed me for His glory, and now I just need to figure out what that looks like in practice.

A couple solid quotes from Piper [2] that I’ve been chewing on…

“It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God’s glory is not scholarship but insurrection.”

“If thinking has the reputation of being only emotionless logic, all will be in vain. God did not give us minds as ends in themselves. The mind provides the kindling for the fires of the heart. Theology serves doxology. Reflection serves affection. Contemplation serves exultation. Together they glorify Christ to the full.”

Still working on actually concluding anything, but thought I’d at least give you a peak into what’s cycling through my mind lately. Any thoughts?

[1] G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”
[2] John Piper, “Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God”