Note: This blog’s shorter than usual, because I spent this past week teaching myself a high school semester’s worth in trigonometry in five days. 

Up until about a year ago, I believed whole-heartedly that “math just wasn’t my thing”. To put it more bluntly, I thought I was way too stupid to understand math, or science, or anything that required any sort of critical thinking, so my expectations for myself in college started very low, leading me to avoid taking on harder classes for a very long time. 

As a result of that, I was bored. But, out of that boredom came the courage to try increasingly difficult classes, and a realization that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as stupid as I thought I was. I just didn’t get the opportunity to learn as much in K-12 as I should’ve. Why? Because I was sicker than a cigarette-smoking beagle for most of K-12, and I had shitty teachers who didn’t understand the subjects they were being asked to teach to a whole classroom of kids, each with their own unique backgrounds and ways of thinking. In other words, the K-12 system really screwed me over in many ways, and I’m quite bitter about it. 

But, my K-12 days have been over for quite some time now. I’m now an adult; a young adult with the personality of a very grumpy old lady. But, an adult with decades ahead of me nonetheless, and I ought to take advantage of that. 

Even better, I’m no longer convinced that I’m stupid. Perhaps I’m uneducated and naive in many ways, but I’m pretty sure every young adult is uneducated and naive in many ways, so I’m not “behind” in any real way. 

If anything, I’m far ahead of where I should be. Statistically speaking, I should’ve died a very long time ago. But, by the grace of God, I’m still here. Why I’m still here? I don’t know. That’s a question for another blog. 

Even when I was really, really sick, my life wasn’t meaningless or “not worth living”. I traveled everywhere, from the peak of Mount Blue Sky to the Tower of London. I hunted my first pronghorn while sneezing bloody snot rockets out of my sinuses (and slept for two straight days afterward). And I rode my dirtbike every damn day for weeks while finishing high school at home. 

I also managed to keep up in school. I never once skipped a grade, and I was way too smart and functional to require Special Education (unlike what several of my elementary teachers thought). I just had a lot of physical challenges most other kids didn’t have, and a shitload of anxiety that added fuel to the fire. But, I still made it, and that’s that!

Now, I’m a healthy, functional adult (even though I still don’t feel like an adult), and I have the opportunity to fix the parts of me that remain fucked up from my childhood. Specifically, I’m working on improving my shoddy math skills, not because I enjoy it (I don’t), but because I think it’s necessary for me to learn math the right way. 

What do I mean by that? 

Well… most of my K-12 teachers taught math very shittily (is that a word? It is now). And when their method of teaching failed to work itself out in my brain (and probably the brains of many other students in my classes), I was the one who was punished for it! At best, teachers told me the myth that even Einstein failed math in elementary school (in reality, he did not fail at math. He excelled at it starting on day one). At worst, they called me “slow” to my face and humiliated me in front of the entire class (often every week).

That pattern didn’t stop until a Pseudomonas infection kicked my ass and forced me to finish high school via Homebound. Ok, the way I wrote that makes it sound horrible, like I’d been imprisoned for the crime of getting sick or some shit. But in reality, Homebound was the greatest three semesters of K-12 I ever had, and a seed of hope was planted in those years. A hope for a brighter future. 

Thanks to Homebound, I graduated high school on time in the spring of 2019 with a 4.0 in nearly every class I took, bringing my final GPA to somewhere around an impressive 3.5 GPA. I intended to take a year off to learn how to drive and get some other ducks in a row. But, then covid hit right as I was starting to consider taking a class at my local community college. So, I ended up spending the next year-and-a-half dodging covid by moving around three different states and living in the cheapest (yet nicest) Airbnb’s the world will ever see. 

That said, I wasn’t having a very good time. It wasn’t like I (or anyone else) was going out and doing touristy things. I didn’t want to risk getting covid unvaccinated, so my family and I avoided busy places like the plague they were, and wore N95 masks and rubber gloves whenever we had to brave a grocery store or gas station bathroom. I don’t care if people call me a hypochondriac for that. It kept us healthy and covid-free, while we still managed to keep our sanity. 

As soon as I got my vaccines, I was more than ready to get back to normal. That meant shedding my masks and going to college. Not wearing those stupid masks was the easy part. Going to college was also easy, but I liked it about as much as my dog likes getting groomed. It sucked in the moment, but when I survived Astronomy 101 (a math heavy course) with a B, I was very proud and, honestly, very surprised as well.

To be continued…