Calculus Collapse (Winter Wonderland)

By Jennifer Brevell

Pencils scratch, are you listening?

In the den, brows are glistening

A studious sight

We’re configuring tonight

Working on sinusoidal graphs.

Gone away, is the TV

Here to stay, are the Matrices

The calculator’s on

As we search so long

Working on sinusoidal graphs

In the street we can see the carolers

We pretend that we might have some time

They’ll say, “Are you coming?”

We’ll say, “No, man!

But call again when you come back around.”

Later on, we’ll configure

As we sit by the heater

To face unafraid

The mess that we’ve made

Working on sketching curves in space.

In our class we’ll construct some theorems

And pretend we understand them, too

We’ll add, subtract, and divide

Multiply and collide

With imaginary numbers no one ever sees

When it flows, ain’t it thrilling

Though your brain gets a filling

We’ll calculate our day

The mathematical way

Working on sinusoidal graphs

We can fell the asymptotes a shaking

Pretty soon our graphing will collapse,

Leaping over cosine

To the square roots

Reaching into an orthogonal tree

Confusion reigns in the classroom

Laughter rings in the hallway,

We’ll soon be on break

But first we must take

A test on Pythagorean identities

Santa’s bringing presents in a few days,

Boxes full of geometric shapes

When you get your hexagonal cylinder

Take the derivative and change your ways