The Math Test Saga
For Those of Us Who Believe Numbers and Symbols Should Never Mix.
I’ve always been terrible at math.
Decimals, fractions, multiplication, and division? Sure.
But the minute you start adding in symbols and weird floating lines?
You might as well ask me to decipher hieroglyphics.
In braille.
Do you remember math class?
You’d struggle through weeks of homework, only to be handed a page full of numbered bullet-pointed nightmares. And then the dreaded phrase:
“Show your work.”
I barely understood what I was doing on a good day.
My thoughts were like banana pudding and silly string in a food processor.
And now I’m supposed to explain that mess with any degree of coherence?
And you’re going to grade me on it?
Let’s not do that.
Please?
Statistics wasn’t much better.
They’d ask: “What are the odds of winning the lottery if you buy two tickets?”
My inconveniently over-efficient brain, which had already memory dumped everything from the study guide the night before, calmly replies:
“Small.”
Thank you, brain. You’ve been very helpful.
I’ll just go re-register now, since the odds of me passing this class and the answer to that question are the same:
“Small.”
Every so often I meet someone who majored in mathematics, and I look at them like a minor celebrity.
Somewhere between Neil Patrick Harris in Starship Troopers and Walter White.
If that’s you? You have my utmost respect.
If not?
You can join me in utmostly respecting those who do.
- KC