I’m better at learning Spanish than I am at learning math -- a fact that wouldn’t be so comical if I mentioned that I didn’t start studying Spanish until halfway through high school, whereas math is a basic requirement to pass every grade in the United States.
It’s sad, really, because I want to be good at math. I want to be good at it, but I also need to understand it for daily adult life.
Loans, budgets, traffic tickets, bills.
All numbers.
Numbers that wiggle in my brain when I try to make them do what I want.
Numbers that make it hard to focus and easy to cry.
It's never even been that I've had awful experiences with math (just one, I'm taking that bitterness to my grave), it just doesn't mesh well in my brain. At one point in my life, somebody told me that the reason I wasn't good at math was because I'm a girl and girls are supposed to be good at history and English.
It made me a little angry.
I am good at history and English, but it's not because I am a girl. And I wish I was better at math to prove whoever that person was wrong. I can write circles around problems but I certainly can't give you the diameter. I can read books until all words are exhausted, but the textbooks can't give me character development. I can recite to you the Preamble -- even sing it to you -- but I'm proud of myself for remembering the Pythagorean Theorem for so long. I'd debate with you all day about the factors that escalated tensions between Russia and the US, but trying to find the slope would take probably as long as the Bolshevik Revolution.
I don't need to prove anybody wrong to survive in a math class, just maybe myself. I'm good at things, but it's okay if math isn't one of them.
To all the kids that just don’t get math, you’re not the only one. You can do it, as long as you don’t mind a bit of groveling and online tutoring websites.
