The problem is that for years I've been telling myself, "I'm bad at math."
I've concluded that the typical teaching style offered in schools is not the best way to teach everyone. I always find myself zoning out when a teacher/professor attempts to explain the more challenging aspects of the subject being taught. I don't think I'm alone.
In elementary school, my eyes would glaze over when we were being taught fractions. Unable to ensure that everyone in the class fully understood the subject, the teacher passed me over after a few attempts and moved on to more difficult subjects. Everything went right over my head. I forgot to mention that I was in a magnet program. We spent more time working on projects and increasing our FCAT scores than actually learning and understanding anything.
It certainly didn't help that I was taught math solely in French during middle school; a crucial time in life where abstract concepts are harder to grasp when they are not taught in your native tongue. How I grew to fear geometry! This fear carried forward to high school, where my studies continued on in English. I can remember sobbing at the end of a geometry test after everyone else had left the room and I was the only one still futilely attempting to finish my test. I learned nothing from Pre-Cal.
What blows me away is that in 11th grade, I had to take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), which is an entrance test for the military. I scored in the 83rd percentile for math skills. This means that I scored higher than 83 out of every 100 students. I thought my math skills were rather poor, but apparently, they were actually much better than average. That is really, really sad.
By the time I entered university, my foundation in math was so shaky that I really don't know how I managed to pass my required calculus and statistics classes.
When people learn that I have a degree in accounting, the typical response is, "Wow, you must be good at math!" Ummmm...okay...
According to Wikipedia (which, of course, is the ultimate authority on everything) I probably suffer from mathematical anxiety at this point. They describe it as, "anxiety about one's ability to do mathematics independent of skill." It probably doesn't help sufferers to know that some psychologists have developed a "Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale" (MARS) that utilizes statistics (more math!) to measure math anxiety.
Anyway, if you are reading this and thinking, "Gee, I could have written this post!" I hope that you will join me in giving math another go. It would suck if I'm the only person in the world who admits to being bad at math while secretly wanting to be good at it.
I will be starting close to the beginning. My goal is to develop a genuine understanding of math. I don't expect it to be easy, and neither should you. Go ahead and leave me a comment if you have any questions; I'll do my best to help you.
Oh, and this time around, I'll be teaching myself, thank you!
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