Ron Rockwell
“That’s it for today. Remember, homework is due next class! And don’t forget: we have a test on Friday on everything we’ve learned through the chain rule. I’ll be in my office on Wednesday from twelve to two, and Thursday from three to four.”
College calculus is boring. It’s boring for the students; they have to do homework and study for tests, even though many of them are only in the class to fulfill a degree requirement. It’s boring for the professor—he has to come to class and stand in front of 45 students, many of whom are surfing the web or simply copying down notes like a robot. Few people can find something exciting about a college calculus course.
In this sense, Ron Rockwell is the perfect college calculus professor. His life, like college calculus, has been boring. His weeks consist of teaching three college calculus courses, a Differential Equations course, and doing research in mathematics. Things are almost too steady for Ron—rarely does he get excited, because there are so few things for Ron to get excited about.
Ron tried to do a career and live a comfortable, normal life. Like he’s always been able to, Ron succeeded and accomplished those goals. He earned a degree in mathematics from Brigham Young University, and though he wasn’t exactly into the Mormon scene, he took comfort in the structure and peacefulness of the culture. Ron has been described by his colleagues as quite passive and risk-averse, with a touch of arrogance.
Ron went on to work in insurance, and set a goal to pass the exams required in order to get certified as an Enrolled Actuary. This was no problem for Ron, and by age 30 he was earning $85,000 per year. He could have negotiated a raise, but to Ron, it wasn’t worth trouble. By age 40, he was earning $90,000 per year.
On his fiftieth birthday, Ron quit his job to pursue a career as a math professor. Ron got fed up with crunching numbers for people who sell insurance. Actually, Ron was getting fed up with a lot of things—his failed marriages, his neighbors, and the general monotony of daily life in second-rate New Jersey suburbs. Ron wanted to do something that had a tangible impact on others, and empowering young people with the power of mathematics provided him with a sense hope he hadn’t had for a long time.
So, on Tuesday September 16, fifty-three year old Ron Rockwell finished up his day teaching college calculus at Shippensburg University. He drove his 2007 white Toyota Camry five and a half miles to his two-bedroom house, and ordered spring rolls and chow mein for delivery. When it arrived, he didn’t tip the delivery guy. He sat in front of his television, ate his food, and went to bed.
Ron woke up on Wednesday September 17 at 7:45 AM and prepared for the day. Ron’s Wednesday outfit included an untucked polo shirt and loose-fitting khaki pants. He had his Differential Equations lecture at 11:00, a college calculus office hours slot from 1:00-3:00, and research time in between.
There was some traffic on the way in; Ron struggled through an additional 10 minutes to his commute that normally took 15. After parking his car on campus, Ron spit out his chewing gum onto the sidewalk as he walked to his office.
Ron went over some college calculus homework that still needed to be graded. It amazed him at how poor some of it was—it almost seemed like the students had no pride in their own work. Out of 45 students in this particular batch, 23 assignments were average work, 6 were excellent, 11 were sub-par, and 5 didn’t even hand something in. The average score was a 2.2 out of a possible four points.
This blatant display of incompetence had been bugging Ron for a while now. Though maybe a few students actually had a legitimate struggle with the course, it was obvious to Ron that his class was underachieving and extremely disengaged; this was not at all what he envisioned when he took this job. Ron was genuinely confused by this; why would a student pay tuition and take a class without at least showing some sense of effort and interest?
By 2:15, only two students had stopped by office hours—Mike wanted to know if he could make up his missed homework from last week, and Julio had a legitimate question about the Chain Rule in anticipation of Friday’s exam. Ron sighed and surfed the web.
Near the end of office hours, one of Ron’s students walked in.
Molly, an energetic freshman Accounting major, had been frustrated with calculus lately. Back at her small high school in western Pennsylvania, Molly was the captain of the cheerleading squad, valedictorian, and voted by her classmates as “Most Likely to Succeed”. She was raised by her mother and never met her father.
“Professor Rockwell, why should we care about calculus?”
Ron looked up at Molly with a blank look on his face.
“I mean, I understand that some really smart people use it. But I’m a business student—I’m not going to be doing integrals when I’m auditing a client!”
Ron felt torn between hope and frustration. On one hand, Molly seemed genuinely interested in finding a meaning in the mathematics, which was a new and exciting development for him as a teacher. Still, the fact that she even asked this question was a sign that she wasn’t exactly a deep thinker.
“Molly, I doubt you’ll be doing integrals on the job at KPMG. There’s a chance that after you finish this course, you’ll never take another limit or derivative ever again. Even if this is the case, tell me, why do you think it’s good for you to take calculus?”
Molly stared. “I don’t know, that’s why I asked,” she replied flatly.. This was the second time this semester she came to office hours. The first time, she came in to ask for points back on an assignment. Ron gave her the points even though she didn’t deserve them.
Professor Rockwell tried his best to craft a gentle, but helpful, response. “Molly, though your day-to-day business might not require you to understand Riemann Sums or Chain Rule, calculus is at work behind most of the interesting and useful things human civilization has to offer. And as a citizen of the world, not only does knowledge of calculus enrich your existence, but it gives you a leg up on those who haven’t connected those dots.”
Molly was fascinated by that answer. “That’s an interesting way of putting it! But why don’t they teach it to us like that? I can’t recall any lesson you’ve given us that connected to the world around us. I think more students would enjoy the course if you provided us with more context in class.”
The professor was impressed with how straightforward Molly was. He actually agreed with her, but the amount of math that had to be covered didn’t leave any time for digressions and conversation in class. This is where he had no answer—he agreed with everything she said, but there was no wiggle room to make any changes to his class. And for a moment, he felt sad and powerless.
On Thursday September 18, Ron woke up to what seemed like an approaching morning thunderstorm. There was no rain falling, but the sky was stormy-gray and thunder could be heard from lightning strikes in the distance. Ron fixed himself some coffee and went outside to the porch on the side of his house to get a breath of fresh air. He looked up to the sky and enjoyed the power of nature. For some reason, Ron always loved watching storms.
A bolt of lightning flashed in the sky right before Ron’s eyes. Simultaneously, a terrifying and powerful thunder clap rocked him, knocking him off his feet and spilling his coffee. Fight-or-flight immediately took over. The sound lingered for what seemed to be a full 60 seconds, slowly decreasing in magnitude as dogs barked and birds torpedoed away from the strike. Ron screamed and somersaulted under the roof of his porch; heart was pulsing and, for the first time in decades, he truly felt a fear for his life.
Roughly 140 seconds passed before Ron felt the heat from his coffee on his right side. Still shaking and hyperventilating from an overdose of anxiety, he staggered inside to grab a towel to clean up coffee and sweat. He noticed his left elbow was bleeding from his tumble to the pavement. Lightning struck again, this time further out in the distance, and Ron froze when the thunder rolled through. About a mile in the distance, Ron noticed a large tree with glowing ember branches and smoke rising.
It took 45 minutes for Ron’s adrenaline to reach a baseline level. The light show moved away, but the storm clouds remained. A trace of Ron’s analytical mind finally started to come back to him—it had been a while since his primal instincts took total control like this. He reasoned that the lightning had to have been within 200 meters of his house, since in his frame of reference there was virtually no gap between the bolt and the boom.
He considered how the lightning could have just as easily struck a quarter of a mile to the west and zapped him into oblivion. Life seemed so precious. Ron began to feel a sense of urgency about life that he had never felt before. If lightning could strike him out of nowhere, did it really make sense to live such a passive existence? What were his goals, anyway? What was he chasing in life?
Ron cruised into his Friday morning calculus class in a royal blue dress shirt tucked into his best fitting gray trousers. He greeted Molly with an eager “Hello there!” as she was sitting in the front row chatting with the girl next to her. Some of the students turned their head as Ron merrily acknowledged a member of the class without any reference to calculus at all.
“How are you all today?” For the first time this semester, Ron didn’t start class by turning his back and writing on the board. Students looked up from their electronic devices and took notice of the abnormality. They weren’t, however, intrigued enough to manage a response to the greeting.
“Today we were going to continue our discussion on integration by parts, but I thought that, because it’s Friday and we’ve all been working hard, we could take a day and discuss how everything we’ve been learning fits into the context of mathematics, and life in general.”
The entire class did nothing but stare back at their professor.
“I do think that sometimes, we can get lost in the technicality and rigor of mathematics, and as a result we lose our focus on some of the reason why it’s important we study these ideas in the first place.”
The students continued to stare back at him. Molly smiled.
“So today, we’re going to talk about some of these things and get our creative juices flowing. Then you’ll have some time to mull it over and you’ll write five pages about your favorite application of mathematics.”
Hands flew up in the air, and some students groaned. “Professor Rockwell, this wasn’t originally on our syllabus! Calculus is hard enough; you can’t just give us extra work!”
“This will be worth the remaining portion of your 30% homework grade, because you won’t have any more book problems to hand in for the rest of the semester. Of course, you’ll want to work out some of the problems that I recommend in order to prepare for your exams, but there will be no more busy work for points,” Ron explained.
Students asked some more questions. They wanted to know how the project would be graded; would the format of the writing be important, and was the paper to be single or double spaced? Would they have to cite their sources and include a bibliography?
Ron answered a few questions, but finally put it to a stop. “Treat this as an open-ended assignment, and have some fun with it. This is an opportunity for all of you to explore your curiosities and reach outside the realm of rules and equations in this class. Don’t worry so much about the outcome, and enjoy the process.”
Weeks later, Ron began to see a steady stream of office-hours visitors. At first, the students came in to ask specific questions about the grading and objectives of their assignment. But it wasn’t long before students were coming in just to chat with their professor about the various applications of math they had discovered. Daniel, a Marketing major, was interested in how market researchers use mathematics to influence advertising decisions. Lillian had an internship at Citibank last summer, and wanted to know what kind of math they were doing in the quantitative finance department. Michael wanted to know how to optimize his poker and blackjack strategy.
Molly was an especially frequent visitor. Her interest was in studying trends in the balance sheets of major public corporations, with a focus on how these companies tended to allocate their assets and expenses. Recently, she had become increasingly interested in attending office hours and talking with Ron about applied math. She was at his office so often that Ron had to schedule Molly for her own appointments, and they began to meet up for lunch to talk about things other than applied math.
On Wednesday October 23rd, Ron and Molly met up for lunch at the campus Chipotle Mexican Grill. Ron got a steak burrito with brown rice and pinto beans, while Sally ordered a chicken burrito bowl with three small tortillas on the side. The weather was overcast and humid.
“How is your research going? Did you manage find to that data from the government website I showed you?” Ron asked as they sat down.
Molly answered excitedly. “Yes, in fact I downloaded it and it was very useful. I found everything I was looking for, and more. I was actually surprised at how much cash Apple has on its books.”
“That’s good, I’m glad to hear it. I’m really looking forward to reading your paper next week.” Ron and Molly both took bites of their food as conversation stalled, and they watched some darker clouds come rolling in.
“So Ron, when did you decide that you wanted to get into teaching? Since you don’t have an advanced mathematics degree, why make the move into academia so late in your life?”
Ron took extra time while chewing his burrito to buy time. He wasn’t sure how to answer this question in a way that would be reassuring to Molly.
“Well, I had been an actuary for a little while, and it paid well, but I wasn’t really happy, wasn’t really feeling any sense of purpose of fulfillment, you know? And I tried to marry, tried to be happy, but none of it really worked out. And…” Ron paused.
“Well, I never really had any children of my own, and I really do love mathematics, and I wanted to make some sort of positive impact on young people while getting a fresh start at the same time. I don’t really know, that’s just kind of how it happened,” Ron explained, nervously. The wind started to pick up outside.
“Do you ever regret not having kids?” Molly asked plainly, but with a look of sincerity in her eyes.
“Well…” Ron paused again. He felt a chill run through his body and his palms became sweaty. The conversation was getting very personal, but Ron felt safe with Molly. Though he hadn’t consciously given it any thought, Molly was now the closest friend Ron had had in over a year.
“Actually—this is something that I usually don’t share with many people, as it’s quite personal—but when I was first married, I wasn’t as happy as I wanted to be, and I did some things I shouldn’t have, you know? I met somebody through a friend at a show, her name was Jane…”
Molly dropped her fork.
“… and she was amazing. And we started to hang out, spent a lot of time together, and…”
It started to rain outside.
“And, you know, I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing because I was married, but I just wasn’t thinking very clearly. And then, one thing led to another and Jane and me, we made a mistake, and we got pregnant.”
Molly was staring straight through Ron’s skull. Ron kept going. The rain and wind picked up.
“And at that point, I had no idea what to do. I was just stuck in a rut and confused, and when that happened, it just kind of compounded the problems I was having. Then Jane said she was going to keep the baby. And when this happened, I panicked. I panicked, and I handled it really badly, and I ran away from my problem instead of facing it—oh Molly, listen, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Molly, sobbing uncontrollably, said nothing before getting up and dashing out the door into the pouring rain. Ron sat motionless with his half-eaten burrito in front of him, while he tried to digest Molly’s reaction to his confession. A few patrons stopped chewing their food and peeked over towards Ron. A few seconds later, the windows flashed with light, the power went out, and a deafening crack of thunder roared and rattled through the walls.