Assignment 6 - math tutoring - Cat Lucier

I love getting lost in numbers and formulas and letters. I've always had an incredible aptitude for math of any sort. I pick things up on the first time it's taught, and I go home and do the assignment, plus a bunch more problems from the chapter (if I don't have a ton of other homework that takes higher priority). It's a sort of meditation.

In my math classes, I am usually known for being able to provide help. It's through this informal assistance to my classmates that I've found that I love tutoring and teaching. It's a feeling like no other: the pride of seeing my tutee do a problem correctly on their own, or being able to see when something finally clicks for them, and they are suddenly able to do so much more. Most Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I do math peer tutoring in Mrs. Dewees' room. Getting community service hours is just an added bonus to the joy I find doing it. Math tutoring and teaching is my passion. 

Sometimes I'll just go off about Fermat's Theorem, or fractals, or whatever happens to be tickling my fancy at the time. Usually, I am met with blank but indulgent stares, but if I'm at the dinner table with my family, it becomes a multi-hour discussion where we break out the big wall whiteboard and everything. I visited Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology yesterday morning (October 3), and I happened upon one of the math/statistics professors. For 15 minutes we geeked out about our favorite theorems, his being one about how the square root of two is irrational, and mine being Fermat's last theorem. It was so cool to talk with someone as enamored as I am with math tutoring and teaching. I know that I'm going to college to get degreed in statistics and pure math and certification for teaching higher education. Sorry, but I don't like high school kids.