Life as a math graduate student...

Decided to try the meme where you describe what you do using only the ten hundred most-used words.

"Math"...wasn't on the list!

I study things about numbers, and different ways of adding them together and making new numbers, and ways of using numbers to talk about space, and which things are different and which things are the same.

In a few years I will have to find something new about numbers, that no one has shown before, but for now I learn things that people already know. I have to learn lots of things to know how to find something new. Most of the things I study, it's not easy to see how they might be used in normal life, but I find the numbers beautiful and interesting in themselves.

When I'm not learning myself, I am helping other people learn. I have three groups of students who I talk to about how to tell how big something is, or how fast it is going, or whether it is going up or down or right or left, or somewhere in between. Other times I sit in a room where students come and ask questions about their work and I try to answer.

More descriptions along these lines via st_aurafina here.

So yeah. I'm a PhD student in (pure) math. And I TA for Calculus 3. And work in the Math Help Room.