I asked this question in our Math Ed 101 class this week, a class for students beginning or considering the math education major. As I expected, several students eagerly raised their hands.

The first student said, “Maybe I’m not supposed to say this, but I actually love mindless exercises. I like following a process and getting an answer, over and over. It’s very satisfying.”

Another student said, “I love the certainty of math. I love knowing that there’s a right answer, and that there’s a way to get there.”

And so it continued, with all the answers in more or less the same vein.

I ask this question when new majors come into my office for advisement, too, and I have heard what many, many prospective math teachers love about mathematics.

Here’s what no one says:

• I love how there are so many ways you can solve a math problem.
• I love how creative mathematics is.
• I love it exploring a problem when I don’t even know where to start.
• I love how math helps you see connections between ideas that seem totally unrelated on the surface.
• I love using math to try to understand complex, real-world problems.

One of the things I love about my work is that I get to take my prospective teachers’ love of mathematics and expand it, from a math that is simple and certain, to a math that is complex and surprising and connected and beautiful.

But on Wednesday when I listened to this particular group of students, I wondered what would happen if future math teachers came to us already loving the complexity and surprise and connectedness and beauty of mathematics, instead of loving math because of the exercises. Are those students even out there? And if they are, why aren’t they the ones choosing a math education major?

This is an incomplete thought, but I’m learning to be okay with pressing publish on an incomplete thought.

The power and potential of an incomplete idea. That’s one of the things I’ve learned to love about mathematics.