Math: The Bane of My Existence

carrieaimelire, we hereby appoint you Ambassador of the Society of Butts Against Math. Your badge is in the mail.—Sparkitors

As with pants, math and I are not friends, compatriots, chums, mates, or consorts.

We are not bros.

And we are not homies either.

I detest math. I loath it. I despise it. If math were a person I would coldly ignore it in the hallways, and if I brought cupcakes to school, Math would not get one. Not even a deformed one.

I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual, because math often tricks me into putting the wrong answers on my quizzes. That jerk.

Part of my hatred of math stems from a truly horrible, heinous, evil teacher I had in middle school.

Let's call her Mrs. R.

Mrs. R had it in for me from day one. I raised my hand to ask a question in class. She raised her eyebrows at me, and I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth before she gave me an incredulous look. I could feel the heat of the Devil radiating from her eyes. And then she told me to shut my mouth and that I was not to ask stupid questions. Ever.

And I apparently didn't get the message, because I tried to ask questions in class 7 more times.

And each time I was shot down and told I was an idiot.

And she didn't understand why I kept failing quizzes. I think she just assumed I was a total moron.

But the experience of being in that class left indelible scars on my poor, tender heart, and I have not asked another question in a math class since.

Really.

I'm terrified of raising my hand because I'm terrified of asking a stupid question and I'm terrified the teacher will silently judge me with his brain and that my classmates will silently mock me with their eyes.

I just...couldn't take that. Not again.

So I'm sort of on my own in math. I'm too proud to ask for help and yet I find myself floundering, starring every question as I finish it, saying to myself "TOMORROW I'll go to his homeroom, TOMORROW I'll get help, TOMORROW I will beat mathematics at its own game."

But I don't. 'Cause I'm too cool for that crap.

I have other reasons for hating math, though.

1. Math is full of nonsensical concepts, like "infinity" and "limits" and "irrationality" and "proofs." I can't tell you how many times I got into it with my geometry teacher about proofs. She insisted that I skipped several vital steps in the process and it was impossible to see where I was coming from.

I insisted that I had teleported and if someone couldn't see the correlation between point A and point B, they were an idiot.

2. Proofs alone are a reason to hate math.

3. The specific rules, and how being close to the mark counts for absolutely nothing. You get ONE DECIMAL POINT OFF and the whole freaking problem is wrong. There is no justice in this. In English, if you seem like you kind of-sort of get the question, you at least get partial credit.

4. Graphing.

5. Fitting multiple graphs on one sheet and wasting tons of space.

6. How ridiculous the word problems are.

7. How if you mess up in one tiny area at the beginning of the problem, it throws you off for the rest of it and you wind up with the wrong answer.

8. Graphing calculators. They're convoluted and there are too many buttons and if you press the wrong combination of them the whole thing erases itself and basically explodes. So I'm afraid to touch it outside of my math classroom because I might blow it up. And that thing is expensive.

9. The sheer number of quizzes you're forced to take.

Ironically, I was supposed to be doing math homework while I wrote this post. But I have come to terms with the fact that I will, in all likelihood, fail math this year—and I'm at peace with this. So the quizzes that I'm supposed to be correcting for points are lying unattended on my desk, and my binder with the notes I'm supposed to be studying for tomorrow's test is lying ignored on my floor, and my math book is God knows where. And that's just where I like it.

We know some of you are huge fans of math, and all we can say is: WHY????

Related post: Math=Voldemort