Smackdown entry, Monday, June 17: stupid things that make you cry

(This entry is dedicated to (a) Jimmy Buffett, and (b) the new MATH+1 forum, the one MATH-related thing that doesn't give me major anxiety, though the name sure turned me off at first. Fortunately, it has nothing to do with actual math!)

Truth be told, I don't think that anything that drives me to actual crying, which I don't do much of, is all that "stupid" to cry about. Other than any movie where some kid's mommy gets killed off and the kid is left alone (Beaches, anyone?), anyway.

My main "stupid" thing to cry over in life was math. For most of my life, this has been the one subject that made me feel like a completely stupid moron. Never mind all this other crap about how I'm supposed to be smart and I'm good at so many other things, THIS is the thing that makes me feel dumber than shit. At everything.

Ever since someone broke the news to my parents in first grade that I should be in the gifted and talented program, I've had higher expectations for me than I could ever fulfill. I don't know why I was expected to be good at math, since my parents certainly aren't. There's the occasional math mind in the family, but most aren't so intelligent.

Ever since first grade, I thought math was pretty damn dull. It wasn't impossible for me to do way back then, but being handed 10 sheets of dittos a day of math problems to do just absolutely bored me to death. There was nothing at all to relieve the tedium, and when you got done with one page, there were still 9 more to go. Oh, sure, they'd give you a little puzzle or game to do on the last page of the ditto, but who could wait that long? Not me. They offered beans for people to use in counting if they needed help. I scorned the beans but would often go to take some anyway just so I'd have a reason to get away from the dittos.

Alas, my attitude towards math only got worse as the math went on. Third grade was when they started making us memorize the multiplication tables and have competitions to see who could memorize the most. My worst skill academically is rote memorization of numbers (hence why I hated art history class as well), and for the most part there was no logic behind why the numbers were like that to me. Except for the sixes- the only one I could memorize was 6x6=36. During the competitions I'd just stand there praying that I'd get that one instead of well, anything else. And one time that actually happened. Otherwise, I just felt like dying, looking so bad in front of everyone every day. Fourth and fifth grade had timed tests every day on the multiplication tables, and they marked off your passing each test and how long it took you prominently on the wall. More public embarrassment. I didn't get it down until towards the end of fifth grade.

And then there were fractions. I burst out into tears in the middle of fourth grade, screaming "Four fifths of WHAT NUMBER?!? Six? Ten? What? I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!" And when people answered this with "Four fifths of the whole!" I had no fucking clue what "the whole" was. Whole what?!?

(Aren't you glad you didn't have to teach me?)

In middle school, I went back and forth on the math scale. I was in the middle lower group during sixth grade, during which I had a teacher who was going to retire at the end of the year and thus did only the bare minimum of work. (But that's another story for later.) I somehow tested into the pre-algebra group in seventh grade that all my friends were in, and enjoyed math a whole lot more that year... until I took the pre-algebra placement test for eighth grade and bombed it spectacularly. Back to regular math then.

In high school, I was stupid. I signed up for an algebra class that promised to go slow and give you extra help, only to figure out way too late that "go slow" meant that you took one year's worth of algebra over two years' time. So I sat through one year of yet another class filled with morons, and a teacher who actually encouraged a bit of cheating so that people might actually pass. When I (inevitably) went in to retake a test, most of the time he'd hand out the same test you'd flunked before. And on our final, he'd given us a practice test to do for a week beforehand. On the final exam day, 3 out of 4 pages of the exam were the practice exam. I was the only one who noticed this, to which he happily whispered "Shh!" at me. I got the highest grade in the class, but he still only gave me an A- because everyone else in the class had done so badly it pulled down the curve.

I never got why it was that I'd do everything in the order they told me to, and then I'd STILL manage to get it wrong nearly every time. To this day I am stumped, and nobody could ever tell me what I was doing wrong. Oddly enough, I always did well in my science classes, and could easily do the math required of me in chemistry class.

As for my second first year of algebra, I had the same math teacher who had flunked my mom in algebra over 20 years ago. UGH. Nice enough woman personally, but her teaching style never worked with me well. After I flunked a major test in her class, she made me come in nearly every day at lunch to get help. It took me two quarters to study for the thing... and I still flunked again. At that point she offered me another retest, but I obviously gave up.

The only math I could ever do in a math class in high school was geometry. I was told that there's "algebra" people and there's "geometry" people, and most are only good at one or the other. Unfortunately, I was a geometry person, which barely gets a year, year and a half at that school, while algebra is the important thing that you end up doing for years and that everything is based on.

As for my last year of algebra in school, I had to switch classes midyear from the math teacher I'd had for geometry to the French teacher, who also taught a math class. Again, a nice enough person, but I so didn't work with her style of teaching. Nearly everyone in this class was also a French student, and she often slipped into teaching the class in French. And she wouldn't let us look at examples in the book because she didn't like them. And she only gave extra credit to students with A's. No joke. I had to spend my free periods getting help all the time. My last class of high school was that math class, and I left it GLEEFULLY.

Can you blame me for crying?

As for college, I made sure to check the math requirements at them. My backup school, Sac State, would have required me to take a math class, but this school fortunately did not. They have a general subject GE requirement where you take 3 math and/or science classes. Guess what I did. So I happily haven't done any major math since my freshman year, when I took atmospheric science and had to do chemistry math on my homework. I don't miss it!

I've noticed that a lot of the time there's "math" people and then there's "English" people. If you're good at one, you're likely to be not so good at the other. Though I always envied the hell out of those who gave the appearance of being good at both equally, the valedictorian types. It didn't help that I've somehow always ended up hanging out and dating people who are very good at math.

I always felt like I could be so much better as a student and as a person and as an adult if I could just do math. If I could do math, then I'd finally get straight A's like everyone expected of me, and I wouldn't feel like one of the dumber smart kids. If I could do math, then I wouldn't be just another stupid stereotypical Barbie girl who can't do it. I could have been a real computer geek instead of just a halfassed one who can't even program any more. If I could do math, then I could have majored in a science instead of English and art-fartiness, which is "useless," as a former classmate of mine put it. I could have always found something to do. If I could do math, then I could get one of those high-powered jobs my dad was always pushing me to do. ("If you work for Chevron in Saudi Arabia for two years, you can retire!") If I could just do math, I could finally make money, which lord knows any English major isn't too likely to do. I could just waltz into a cushy job after graduation instead of well, what actually happened.

What good is it to be smart when you're only smart in the ways of writing? Whoopdedoo, almost any moron can do that. And you can avoid doing major writing as an adult if you need to. You can't avoid doing math at all in life. Even if you have a job where you don't have to do it, you'll still have to keep track of your money at the very least.

For the last few months, I've had to do a little math every day at work, converting units from semester to quarter and then adding them up to see if the folks who wrote up the paper got them right or not. A lot of the time I get the wrong totals. Sometimes it's because whoever added it first couldn't do math, sometimes it's because I once again got mixed up and screwed up the numbers or wrote down the wrong number or got confused looking at the long columns of numbers. I recently had to deal with some "incorrect" transcripts I'd first "corrected" back when I started this job, and was saddened to see how many times I had screwed up something.

I feel like I'll just never get it. That I could sell my soul to the devil (probably for cheap, since I couldn't add), and I'd still never get it even then.

In the early adulthood/college years, I dated around. I tried to get a job, but it wouldn't let me because I was too busy with school. I dated around and got engaged to a guy, but he backed out at the altar to go have himself a BBQ instead. Gah. In my thirties/adulthood, I continued to try to get a job, but the game still wouldn't let me because of school. Only at this point, it wouldn't let me quit school, and for some reason there's no college graduation in the game. As for dating, I continued to date, a little more frantically than before. Yet every guy was a jerk or dumped me or something. Gah!

Now this is the part that freaked me out: I hit the 40's level stage of the game and while I finally managed to snag a job, I got fired from it. As for dating, I was disappointed in all the married men hitting on me, not to mention that the guys had gone from sexy names like Rick (my ex-fiance) and Andrew (who dumped me) to like, Verne. I ended up marrying Harvey (that's my great-uncle's name. Kinda ew there. Not a sexy name unless it's a rabbit), who had a nice 15-year-old boy and liked nudist camps and computers.

What disturbed me was that in the 40's, I started totally panicking and trying to get married. And then in the nick of time, I managed it. I even attempted having children, which of course didn't work. I didn't even WANT children (hey, we've already got one), but figured at that age I might as well take a crap shoot at everything before I hit old age and suddenly everything sucked.

Gah. I can't believe I suddenly started doing the Marriage Panic in that. IT'S A GAME! I didn't get a prize for winning for getting married! (Although the wedding gifts sure upped my resources.) I always figured I'd be much calmer about that sort of thing were I to hit that age without a ring. But noooo, I went berzerk. Very disturbing. After that, I quit the game, as there wasn't going to be anything else to look forward to on the way to death.

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