There’s nothing like the experience of studying a new subject for the first time. Here’s Walt Whitman’s poem Beginning My Studies about just that:
Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact of consciousness, these forms, the power of
motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
One thing I really appreciate about being a tutor is that I get to reexperience that “first step” vicariously through my students. Today I got to tutor a subject I love to someone who is just starting. I don’t think that will ever get old.
Herndon Math 