Now I Remember Why I Hated Math

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here. I am thankful for a nice morning at church, beautiful weather, a lovely lunch and a wonderful nap, but now it's time to hit the books. It's a little difficult to muster up the desire to study when you're not in school; it feels a bit uncalled for. Yet, the reality is that my OGET and OSAT tests--the general test and subject area test for teacher certification in the state of Oklahoma--are looming and I haven't really put much effort into studying for them. But study I must...it would be awfully embarrassing to fail a test that is supposed to encompass the basic skills that any teenager in the state should have in order to graduate from high school!

I downloaded the study guide and have been tediously making my way through it. Language Arts generally come easy for me, and I don't usually have a tremendous amount of difficulty with Science, either (so long as you're not asking me to become a endocrinologist or something), but Math....Math is my Achilles heel. I distinctly remember coming home in fourth grade with giant tears rolling down my face because I had a "C" on my progress report in Math. Fractions were killing my straight A average and my hopes of perfection (lol)! From that point on, I struggled in Math, though I usually found a way to keep my grades up to an acceptable level that wouldn't induce serious crying fits. I actually thought, for a moment, that I might enjoy Geometry, but eventually, I would run into some sort of equation that I simply could not wrap my mind around and would, once again, have to come to terms with my shortcomings in Math.

Math was always the subject area with the lowest score on any standardized test that I ever took. In fact, I never attempted taking the SAT because, although I probably would have benefited from a test that was largely based in Language Arts, I knew that the other half (being pure Math) would kill my score.

All this to say, here I am at thirty-two years old trying, for the life of me, to remember how to do linear equations and line graphs. It's very frustrating, to say the least, but it's also kind of a nice challenge. I've noticed that a great many things that I could not fully understand as a teenager or younger adult have actually become a little less difficult over time. For example, I find it easier to understand some foreign languages or at least understand how they are conjugated, though it once was my most difficult class as a freshman in college. So, as I study these equations that once made me sweat and worry and find that I can actually solve them after all (even though I have not found reason to use those skills in the 14 years since I have been out of high school), it makes a girl feel pretty good.

That's not to say that I'm finally figuring all this Math stuff out. It's still giving me headaches, I'm still thankful that it's a multiple choice test and I still hate Math...but I'm allowing myself a little bit of hope: maybe I'll pass the Math portion after all.