I don't particularly like my job.
Yes, I teach at Oakfjord University - the magic academy, the School on Three Hills, the one mages will go decades into debt and give years of their lives just to be able to say they graduated from - but I don't teach, you know, magic. I don't teach anything quite supplemental to magic, either, unless you're working on some really abstract theory, and if that's your career path you're probably not applying to attend Oakfjord. But it is, for better or worse, a public university, and to earn any public-university degree you will need to have met certain requirements.
So I teach math. It's a living.
I share a department with the other "Gen Ed" teachers. There's Ralph the history prof, who doubles as the department chair (I assume because he enjoys the paperwork for its own sake). Then there's Kaycee the literature prof, Alfred the sciences prof... there's even an art class some years, though Ralph's taught it ever since Margaret left. It's hard not to feel left out, though, when our classes include "History of Magic," "Magic in Literature," "Intro to Magical Engineering," and "Algebra."
I used to try to spruce it up and tell the mages-in-training why they should learn this stuff, but I found myself making promises I couldn't keep. The truth is, most of them probably won't use it again after they pass my classes. It's a pointless, inconsequential course full of students who would much rather be somewhere else. All of my courses are.
So it always catches me off-guard when somebody aces them.
Juniper was an alchemy major with a minor in divination and a 3.0 GPA - barely high enough to avoid getting kicked out. Most students in that position will put off their Gen Ed courses for another semester until their grades are under control. She, instead, signed up for two of them: Trigonometry and Magical Chemistry. Chemistry made sense - Alfred has spoken at length about how it really ought to just be an alchemy course, considering the overlap with ACH102, so it tends to be an easy A for alch majors. Trig, though? Nobody aces trig. I don't even teach it most years - some genius from admin decided not to make algebra a prerequisite, and I hate to see kids choose it because they think it's an easier alternative.
But I have to at least teach it occasionally or Ralph gets mad at me for messing up his spreadsheets, so that semester it was three sections of algebra, one of remedial pre-algebra, and one of trig. And for the first homework assignment, the one a third of the class will look at and withdraw before it can hurt their GPA, Juniper turned in work that was almost perfect. And so it went - she didn't talk much, in class or out of it, just quietly memorized and applied the material.
When we started getting into the identities, she added a note to one of her answers: Why does this work, though?
Once upon a time, I would've gone over that in class, but by then I'd come to understand that nobody really cared. That night, I grabbed a blank sheet of paper, scribbled out a proof, and returned it with her graded assignment. She came to my office hours later that week to ask about some of the notation I'd used, forgetting she'd never had a chance to learn it. After that, she started using some of it in homework and tests. And we started chatting after class most weeks - about the math, about our lives, about Oakfjord. I learned she had a scholarship, a family that ran an alchemic transmutation business, and a cat she'd smuggled into her dorm room. And I never saw her more energized than when she was trying to solve a problem.
I finally asked, a while later, why she chose trigonometry as her math Gen Ed.
"I took algebra in high school," she said, shrugging. "I didn't want to just redo it. And I'd rather not wait until next semester."
"You could've tested out of it," I pointed out. "Skip the requirement altogether."
She just shrugged and replied, "I like math."
"Why are you here, then?" I blurted without thinking. "If you'd rather solve triangles than transmute gold, why apply to Oakfjord of all places?"
She gave me a really sad look, then. "What else am I supposed to do? My mom would kill me if I lost my scholarship and went home now."
"Did you... want to come here?"
She shrugged. "It doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"
Juniper passed trigonometry with a 104% A, thanks to the extra credit she did despite never needing to. And during winter break, she asked me if Oakfjord offered any math courses more advanced than trig, that she could maybe take as an elective.
We do. Or, we kind of do. There are never enough students to fill a non-obligatory math class, but there was some precedent for independent studies that get into more advanced material - usually kids going into an experimental discipline who could use another semester of statistics. So I asked what she wanted to learn, and we got permission for her to study calculus that spring.
All this, apparently, out of pure curiosity. It wouldn't even help her GPA like trig had - independent studies have to be pass/fail.
I spent a lot of that semester trying to find some way to make the material relevant for her. Something she could actually use when she graduated. Theoretical alchemy involves a lot of modeling, but Oakfjord only allows undergrads to take three independent studies before they graduate, which wasn't nearly enough time to catch her up on that whole mess. Stats might have been useful if she was going into experimental alchemy, but she was just planning to run her family's shop when her dad retired, not run cutting-edge experiments. And all the day-to-day math she'd ever actually use is stuff she learned in elementary school.
She never seemed concerned about it, though - never asked the age-old "When am I going to use this?" that I could never answer truthfully. So I let it be for a while, until she asked me toward the end of the semester if she could do it again the next year.
"Are you sure you want to?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Yeah, I think so."
"What, just... for funsies? I can't teach anything you'll use for work. It's not going to help you, in the long run."
"Does it need to?" she asked, watching me carefully.
I didn't know what to say to that.
Juniper doodled a bit in the margins of her notes while she thought. "Why did you study math, in undergrad?" she asked.
"...It's been a long time since then."
"That's not what I asked," she chided. "Come on, you must've had a reason."
I leaned back in my chair and glanced out the window. "I thought I had a future in it," I said. "I used to spend hours playing around with open problems, trying things out... figured someday I might make a dent in one of them."
Juniper was frowning, though it seemed like she was trying not to. She didn't ask the "Did you?" follow-up I was expecting, I guess because she could guess that I hadn't. "Do you regret it?" she asked instead.
"I don't know," was all I could say.
She looked back at her notes, filling in parts of her doodle with solid color. "I don't really expect anything from it," she said. "But it... it helps, you know? To have a class in something I'm good at."
"You're good at alchemy," I pointed out. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't."
She offered a low "Hm," still staring at her paper. After a moment of tense silence, she said, "I test well, is all."
It's not the sort of thing I could really argue with - not without seeing her practical skills. Still, I found it hard to believe she wasn't just being hard on herself. "Compared to who?" I asked. "Your dad?"
"My classmates," she replied, voice gaining an edge of resentment. "Most of them didn't grow up in an alchemy shop and they still understand it better than me."
"Why stick with it, then?" I asked without thinking. "You don't really seem to enjoy it, either."
"And what, drop out? Get a math degree over at the community college? Look where that got you."
Almost as soon as she was done speaking, her eyes widened a little and she retreated into her seat a little. Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that."
"It's okay. You're not wrong." I sighed and stood up, wiping off the chalkboard just to give my hands something to do. "I liked studying math," I added quietly. "I like teaching when it's someone who wants to learn, but..."
"Why are you here, then?"
It took me a minute to come up with an answer. When I took this job, I really thought I would enjoy it, but there are only so many rooms full of bored, smartass twenty-year-olds you can suffer through before you stop trying to get on the same page as them. "The money, I guess," I said finally.
She just nodded.
"Do you think you'll like the work?" I asked. "At your family's shop."
"I dunno. But I can't just leave it. Someone needs to run it, and there's no way I'd trust whatever random mage my dad would sell it to."
I put down the eraser and leaned against my desk. "...So," I said, "do you want to study calc II next, or...?"
I ended up teaching her proofs the next fall, and an intro to number theory the following spring, and we kept in touch when she graduated and went home. She's married now, and running her family's shop with her wife, but I still loan her books on occasion and she'll send me her questions when she gets stuck.
I've started iterating on those old problems again. I know I probably won't be the one to solve any of them, but... it's nice, sometimes, to work on something I enjoy.
