I'm going to make a difference: I'm going to teach math.

I used to be one of those high school kids that muttered, “When am I ever going to use this in the real world?” under my breath during every math class.  I highly doubted that being able to factor a polynomial or find the determinant of a matrix would improve the quality of my future life in any way, shape, or form.  My attitude was no different when I walked into AP Calculus on the first day of my senior year.  I sat down at my desk assuming that I would at most tolerate the subject, just like I had with every other math class.  My teacher, Mr. Schembri, introduced himself and immediately dove into the subject material as the other students and I grudgingly took out our notebooks.  Calculus started out as just another class, but as the school year went on, I realized that it had surprisingly become my favorite subject.  For the first time in my life I enjoyed doing my math homework.  It was actually pretty weird.  What kind of loser looks forward to taking math tests and working on calculus problems?  Me.  At first I didn't understand how I underwent such a dramatic and seemingly impossible change.  I hated math before.  What had made calculus so different?

The answer was simple: my teacher.  He encouraged me to be open-minded and receptive to mathematics.  The power and passion with which he taught inspired me to love learning.  He was so excited to teach his students about math, that it made us excited to learn.  I had so much gratitude and respect for him, and I suddenly knew that I wanted to motivate other students the way he had motivated me.  Though I knew I wanted to teach math, I was scared.  I spent my entire life thinking I was going into the medical field, and now I had done a 180 and completely switched majors.  And it's not like I switched to something nice and easy like floral design or whatever.  Math is a hard and scary major, and at first I didn’t know if I was making the right choice.  But here I am today, taking multi-variable calculus and differential equations, with three other college math classes already under my belt.  And I love it.  I know that math is what I'm supposed to do, and I can't wait to be a teacher.  I'm so excited to help and inspire my future students to grow and learn in ways that they won't think is possible.  I'm going to show them how to love both math and learning.  I'm going to make a difference: I'm going to teach math.