On the Lighter Side: All I Want for Christmas Is To Be A Math Teacher >Mike Jensen

It’s the Christmas season again, and you can feel that Christmas spirit everywhere. It’s the time of year when we’re inundated with the sights and sounds of the season: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, two shoppers coming to blows over the last Tickle Me Elmo.

We college professors have our own Yuletide sights to enjoy at this time of year. For us, it’s the Yuletide sight of long-absent students suddenly re-appearing in our seminars, much like the ghosts of Christmas past. These students all come with a common story: despite the fact that they haven’t been to class since Unit 3, they REALLY need to pass this class. But that isn’t the worst of a college professor’s seasonal treats, it’s actually the final grading.

For two solid weeks, during units 9 and 10, all I do is grade papers. I am awash in papers. I am so focused on grading papers right now that anything I see in print, I grade. I took a friend to dinner last night; when the waitress handed me a menu, I graded it. I gave it a C. (The thesis was clear, but overall it wandered a bit.)

It’s at this point in the term that I wish I were a math teacher. Math teachers don’t grade papers; they use these magical things called "check boxes." Students work out the problems, click the appropriate check box, and viola! Instant grades.

Back in college, we English majors used to sit around and laugh at the math majors. While they languished in the library hunched over their books studying trigonometric equations and non-linear functions with one variable, we were outside sitting in the sun reading Shakespeare and Thoreau. We were so smug.

Only now do I realize that the math teachers were the smart ones. Sure, they had to work their way through advanced calculus, but now, during the last few weeks of the term, while the English teachers are locked away grading papers, the math teachers are hanging out watching Oprah and drinking spiked eggnog.

So this year I’m asking Santa to make me a math teacher. Or if he can’t pull that off, maybe he can just find a way to outlaw check boxes.

Did you know...

Mike is currently working toward his EMT certification?

Mike is a full-time professor in Legal Studies.