It took me a few years to be able to say I love math. My elementary school memories of math are complicated. I spent most of my math time in a pullout class to help me learn the basics. My feelings of that time are ones of discouragement and not being up to snuff, well behind the curve. Definitely not ones that would engender further growth and study. Fortunately, my father kept after me with studies. Dad is and always will be a positive, guiding force who feels I was doing just fine, even though I did not. By the end of high school I felt ok with math. Not in love with it, but alright.
Enter college as an Art Education major. To this day I do not understand how my dad persuaded me to take Calculus, but there I was and Art Ed person taking Pre-Calc and then Calculus my freshman year. I think my brain exploded a little bit. Math became more. It was not the static still thing I always thought it was with numbers resting on a worksheet. During lecture one day, the Professor began talking about the number line, a simple straight forward subject. But then it wasn’t what it was to me before being confronted with the idea that I could keep splitting the number line forever. It made me be still. That was the moment math became more. More dynamic, more thought, more questions. If you asked me right now about the exact concepts I learned in the Calc sequence, I would be lost. Time away from that math has erased the content. The feeling that it gave me is very much alive. I may not be able to understand much of the math that lives around us, but I appreciate it for its beauty and function.
Drawing math that intrigues me is satisfying. It is a physical appreciation of mathematics and its visual nature. It provides conversation starters on the math in our lives, both in its uses and our past math experiences. Maybe this will lead to future math experiences that are refreshing and uplifting.
