Today, I begin the process of rediscovering my inner math-lete.
I have rescheduled my teacher's exams, so I will soon be neck deep in polynomials and the like. Rescheduled, you ask? Yes. I HAD scheduled them for November and March, but the Army said we weren't staying in VA, so I cancelled them. But the Army has since changed its' mind and said we ARE staying in VA, so the tests are back on. Mercifully, it only cost me time, not money.
Back to my inner math-lete.
I tend to think of myself as not particularly good at math. This perception comes from my 4 years spent at what my grandfather jokingly referred to as "Bill Clinton's Finishing School for Young Ladies on the Hudson." I made it through all the wretched math classes there, but they were challenging. And boring, did I mention boring? It left me with the impression that, when it came to math, I was just shy of a moron.
Well, #1 commented the other night (when tripped up by the distributive property) that he was glad he had a mom who was so good at math. Hmm. Thinking back to high school, I aced every honors math class I took. Hmm. Maybe I am good at math, just not ready to be a rocket scientist like some of the super-smart people I went to school with. (Seriously, one guy I know did go work for NASA) And to be fair, it IS an engineering school. Us touchy-feely literature-history types just had to deal with it. Maybe math isn't the problem, maybe I have a perception issue.
This train of thought reminded me of when I graduated and went out to the "real" Army, and all us type As were split up, instead of feeding off of each other. I thought I was on the short side (I'm 5'7") and a slow runner (I used to run 2 miles in 14 minutes because I wouldn't get any more points for going any faster). Turns out I am not short, and I was faster than a fair number of the male soldiers, to include a commander that I wasn't a big fan of. Now THAT was a satisfying 2 mile run ;).
It makes me realize that perceived success all depends on who one chooses to use as a benchmark. So as the kiddos get older, I really have to be on the watch for comparisons between siblings or anyone else.
I also realized that I don't have to ace this teacher exam, so I can relax a little bit. And the pass grade is lower than the pass grade in some of the other subjects. (That concerns me, actually. Why would it be okay for the math teachers to score lower?) This is EASY math, not the imaginary curves in space foisted upon my by my humorless Calc 2 professor.
Time to be a little less hard on myself.
