Sales

I don't want to be doing this now. Thanks to the discipline, I'm doing it anyway.

It's not like there's something else I want to do. It's that this feels like a annoying activity. I am not in touch with a feeling that it is accomplishing anything other than fulfilling a requirement. I'll bet this is how my students feel and it's no wonder they often fail. Slave labor is known to be inefficient. I try to say things in class to capture their interest but at best I entertain. The subject itself isn't anything they want to engage with. It's not meaningful to them. Getting them interested in it is a sales job.

I've never wanted to work in sales but: here I am. I use an ad-block on my browser but I need to advertise to my students. The usual way to sell math is with degrees and future employment possibilities. Or more abstractly, that they can think of themselves as a college graduate (once they've made it through) or as a smart person in comparison to others.

I'd always resented those in class who would raise their hands to ask how they would use what they were learning in their lives, but their question, for which I had no real answer, was one I'd do well to confront.

I understand that the ability to express oneself in writing is a useful goal but I remain a bit doubtful that this will help achieve it. At best I can get used to the experience of starting out blank and eventually coming up with something interesting. Today's "interesting" is a new understanding of why my students don't engage with the subject I teach. I don't have a solution but at least I have a better appreciation of the problem.