Math Makes Me Cry

I have a confession: 

I am in a bad relationship. With Math.

Math makes me cry.

I have never been good at math. I used to have fleeting moments when I would grasp the main concepts and feel brilliant. It was like the beginning of a relationship, all sunshine and roses. And then I would start on the homework and my rose coloured glasses would fade. A third of the way into the homework, I would start getting frustrated. Things were not as easy to fit into the box. Then things got more complex and multiple steps involved, and instead of persevering, I pushed my book away and pouted, or found something else to interest me. I’d given up. It was too hard, too confusing. When I asked for help, I got the same lesson explained to me, which I understood, but still continued to struggle once the complexity increased. I felt like I needed to be handheld through each step, too stupid to do it on my own. 

Math took my independence.

I managed to make it to Grade 11 math, and my heart sang in a joyous hallelujah choir when I completed that course and thought I was done with difficult math forever! It was a short lived joy however, as I began my undergrad in music. Did you know that music has a math subject too? It’s called Music Theory, and it was all my nightmares of math now combined with the abstract concepts of music without the black and white comfort math provides. Now, I went into university with a moderate knowledge of music theory, probably the equivalent of elementary school level math, maybe even up to a grade nine level of math. University music theory, at least at my university, was like jumping into grade 11 academic math, accelerating quickly. Three years I struggled with barely grasping concepts, and when I did understand a concept, I was only to be thrown into again into confusion. Music theory is like a combination of math and English. While there are formulas and structures and rules, there are many exceptions to the rule, and all ambiguous. My bad habits I had developed in math class did me no help. I responded to music theory as I did to math. I understood the basics, felt confident and then quickly lost it as soon as the “going got tough”. I even started bringing colouring pages into class because I knew that the lesson was way over my head and I wasn’t going to learn anyways. 

I gave up on music theory the way I gave up on math. I gave up on myself. 

Math had managed to stomp on my self-confidence.

Needless to say, it was a long three years and when I finished my last music theory course I had a similar song in my heart as I did in grade 11. Last week, I did a “math refresher” program to prepare me for my “teaching mathematics” class. I think I cried about three separate times, and had many a frustrated outburst. I worked through 18 years of the math that frustrated me all my educational career in one week. That’s a lot for a girl to take in! All I can say is thank goodness for Google and my husband. Both held my hand while I ventured though all the nightmares.

So that is my confession: 

Math makes me cry. It makes me feel stupid. It makes me give up on myself.  

But I don’t like that. 

I want to love math. I want to understand it and embrace it. I want to get excited about it. I want to make my students excited about it. I need to start a relationship with a new Math.  

That might be reaching a little high for now and I hopefully will get there by the end of this program. But I’m not going to give up. I’ll just make my goals smaller.

            My two goals for this term:
                        1) To stop crying when I do math
                        2) To like Math.

I need to go slow in this new relationship with Math 2.0. I don’t want a superficial, fly-by-night romance with it. I want something lasting. I want something real. So I will start with being civil, and work towards being friends. Love can grow from friendship. But that takes time. 

Check out my Pinterest page to find fun ways to teach math to children! 

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