Dear Diego,

Thank you for your letter about your school. Let me tell you a little about my job. I’m a math teacher at a college. My students are mostly grown up, around 20 years old. A few are married and have children. Two of my students were grandparents. No one is ever too old to learn something new. I teach during our fall term and spring term. I teach three classes each term.

Usually I teach two calculus classes at a time. I’ve included pictures of my two classes. Calculus is about curves and how to find the highest and lowest points on a curve from its formula. It takes many years to learn enough geometry and algebra so that calculus makes sense. Many students in this class are learning about running businesses.

My 11:00 business calculus class, October 24, 2014

My 12:00 calculus class, October 24, 2014

I also teach an upper level class, something different each term. This fall, I’m teaching about geometry in more dimensions than we can see. We have to carefully prove that certain things are true, even though we can’t draw very good pictures of them. It takes a lot of imagination and practice. I’ve included a picture of me teaching at the chalkboard.

Me teaching linear algebra, October 20, 2014

I also do research projects. You may not know this, but there are a lot of important math problems that no one knows how to solve yet. Some of them come from science. I work on unsolved problems in biology and linguistics. I use math to understand how brain cells work, and to understand how people learn languages.

All this studying can be a lot of work, but God’s creation is so beautiful, and I love learning about it, so it doesn’t seem like work at all. Psalm 111 says: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”

Sincerely,
Garrett Mitchener