2. Blogging
3. Jun 12, 2020

The Spring 2020 semester was a wild ride! The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to use remote instruction after Spring Break. Adapting to this new paradigm and coping with the state of the world was challenging for students and instructors. I could not have asked for a more awesome group of students to go through this experience with. I’m really proud of them. I asked a lot of them while investing a lot of emotional capital and they rose to the challenge.

Each semester, I ask some variation of the following question on the final exams:

Describe how your perceptions of learning, especially mathematics, have changed.

So many of the responses that I received this past semester were amazing, but the following from a student (chemistry major) in my introduction to proof course really stood out to me:

I have always enjoyed mathematics, and because of that learning math was an enjoyable process and always made me excited for future courses. However, I have never had as much fun in a math class as I did in this one. To begin with, my perception of what studying mathematics means has completely changed. While manipulating numbers and formulas has its uses, mathematics is so much more. There is a very creative and artistic beauty associated with mathematical proof and logic. Like Cantor’s Diagonalization Argument, it is incredible to think that someone was able to discover such a simple yet mind blowing process. It is just such a creative way to think and I aspire to eventually be like minded in that aspect. That is getting a little off topic, but in terms of learning, this is the first class that I have attempted homework first and then discussed it in the following class. This method is so incredibly effective that I do not understand why I am just now experiencing it. By attempting things on my own first, I am able to think of so many more questions for class and I have always believed the best way to learn is by asking questions. Math can be a difficult subject, especially proof writing, but I feel that it was made much easier by developing a true understanding rather than by force feeding people step-by-step methods or something analogous to that.

Boom!