When I received an 80 on my comprehensive Algebra II final I was relieved. My score was on the lower end of what I had hoped to get after studying for 12 hours in four days, but beggars can’t be choosers. If I really wanted to get an A+, I’d have studied for at least an hour a day, every day, all semester, no exceptions. Even on Sundays. Especially when I didn’t feel like it. And then, 10 days before the test, I’d have increased my study time to two hours a day. But by then, I’d have mastered Algebra II for a test, and moved on to pre-calculus.
Studying math is like running a marathon. Sure, I can stop for a breather at mile 10, but that doesn’t mean I can walk for five miles and expect to finish in good time. Studying math requires consistency. For some students, consistency in studying is motivated by outside forces using coercion and intimidation. This can achieve high marks, but it also creates nightmares. When consistency is fueled by passion, desire—love, even—it produces mastery. Not simply love for the power of knowledge, but love of the quest for the knowledge of power.
In the twenty years since I last took a math class—when my D+ in calculus as a high school senior year was weighted as a B+—my methodology for panicking when I see a problem has not changed. All these years and jobs and mistakes later, I am the same person with the same brain. The only difference now is that the worst has come to pass, and I have survived, coming out the other side with a mandatory interest in learning math. For my future, which is lengthier than I expected it to be in high school, and for my ego, which has shrunken since high school.
But not just learning math, but learning, for lack of better phrase, to math.
According to my professor, Algebra II is high school math, taken in a college setting. “Don’t panic,” my professor told me. “It’s not heart surgery. If you don’t know how to do a problem, move on to the next one, and come back to it. You may remember how to do it later.”
Every student in the class was already familiar with algebraic topics because they all needed to pass high school algebra to take this class. Most of the students graduated last spring, so the material was fresh enough for them to feel like they were super seniors. I thought, and my high school teaching tutor agreed, that Algebra II was slightly more complicated than “high school math.” I remember doing quadratics and polynomials and square roots in high school, but I had months to learn each topic, with quizzes to gauge my lack of understanding in between tests. In college, we had one week per topic, with three tests total all semester. By the end of the semester, there were 13 students left in the class, from 24. So much for an easy repeat of high school for first semester community college.
“It is your responsibility to withdraw from the class if you are failing,” he told us. “It is better to get a ‘w’ on the transcript than an F. A ‘w’ can mean anything. An F means one thing.”
The math learning center in the school library offers free tutoring by professors and grad students every day of the week (except Sunday). These tutors double as reluctant therapists, but eager coaches: newer students puzzling over simple algorithms often express embarrassment. Tutors acknowledge the students’ feelings, offer much needed encouragement, then move on to the next problem without giving them time to wallow, fret and panic. Students learn to quickly overcome their self-doubt to instead focus on the problem on the page in front of them. The problem doesn’t care about a student’s confusion, or feelings of inadequacy. The problem wants to be solved. The problem exists to be solved, and the student exists to learn to solve the problem. That is where power comes from. That is where love comes from.
Spending time in the math learning center is not like spending time in therapy; it is like basic training. The antidote for neurosis isn’t hyper focusing on neurosis, it is dialing in.
“Our culture doesn’t appreciate math anymore,” my professor lamented during office hours. “Students do not care to learn how to solve complex problems for the sake of learning, for the sake of exercising their brains. These kids say they won’t need to know math. Well, you will need to know math for your next math class!”
My professor has coach-like qualities because he is also a lacrosse coach. Like a good coach, my professor acknowledges my good qualities, the qualities that I choose to show him. He said I have a good work ethic, but I need to be more rigorous in my studies. Rigor means consistency. Rigor means love. “There is a power you can feel when you know how to solve the problem,” he told me. “The power one feels by putting in the effort, by doing the work. Earning relaxation, but choosing to do more problems.”
It’s like writing a novel, probably. Solving through the pain. Writing through the pain. The dilemma of the antagonist mirrors the pain of the author.
“So, don’t look at the pain as pointless agony and torture, look at the pain as transformative. Don’t I want to see what the other side of success and hard work looks like? Instead of taking 20 years to run one marathon?” the spirit of my math professor said.
Very well expressed! I truly enjoyed your honest and refreshing insights about learning a challenging subject.