“Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost.”            —W.S. Anglin

(this post was written in 2006, right after my return to college)

THANK. YOU.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

For me math is, at best, a grand test of patience, endurance, and that gnarly feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know (you just…know) that things are about to get very, very bad.

Math and I go way back. All the way back to first grade, in fact.

The relationship started off well, with grainy, purple-ish mimeographed pages (remember these predecessors of color copies and laser-printed sheets?) of neatly printed addition and subtraction problems.

“Staci, meet the plus sign. Plus would like to add two apples to your pile of four oranges. How many pieces of fruit do you have now?”

As long as I could equate math with fruit or cookies, or even pencils or pennies, it was all good. Dare I say, even a tad bit…fun?

It all began to go awry mid-semester of my freshman year in high school. One word says it all, seven little letters. A-L-G-E-B-R-A.

I went into the class a little cocky (because I’d never had to work very hard to make good grades before) and more than a little naive (who knew that polynomials and variables could BE so obstinate?)

By the time I’d managed to crawl through Algebra I by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, I walked into Mrs. Payne’s sophomore geometry class with my tail tucked between my legs.

I was cautiously hopeful that isosceles triangles and terms like area, volume, and perimeter would be kinder and gentler in nature – but I was not holding my breath.

Good thing.

It became a joke in the class that I would treat myself to a banana split at Braums if somehow – by the grace of God or osmosis or whatever worked – I managed to pass the increasingly difficult tests.

Mrs. Payne had the very annoying habit of reading the test grades aloud before handing them back. As if the humilation of a failing grade wasn’t enough on its own, now we had the added bonus of wanting to crawl beneath our desks whenever our name was called.

“Rogers,” she would peer over her half-rimmed, silver reading glasses and make direct eye contact.

With bated breath, I would wait like a defendant on trial to hear my fate.

“Looks like you’re going to Braums today,” she’d nod and give me the barest of grins. “You got a C.”

I still remember the cheers of my classmates and that afternoon, about four o’clock, found a large group of my friends and fellow geometry cellmates clustered around a white Formica table at our local neighborhood Braums.

Some things in life just need to be celebrated, you know?

When (NOT if) I manage to bag the three credit hours of college Algebra that I need in my degree plan, I will celebrate large!

Anybody want in?

UPDATE: June 2008

I sat across from my advisor a few weeks ago and waited impatiently as he perused my transcript, clicked his mouse a few times, rechecked a file, and then – finally – looked at me.

“Did you know-” he paused and – truly – spoke to me as though his gentle tone would somehow soften his news. “-that you have only science and math courses left to take?”

Of course, he meant before I could transfer full-time to the four-year campus.

“Yes.” I nodded and straightened in my seat. “I did know that.”

He glanced down at his screen again and I could see he tried to hide a grin. “I mean…that’s all.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” My words were kind and ladylike but in my mind I was coming across the desk, making a beeline for his scrawny neck and saying really mean things like Do you know that I’m twice your age and I could very well make your very existence nothing but miserable from this point on?

The truth of the matter is, though, that it is rather funny.

In an effort to make my return to college a tad less frightening and a lot more exciting, I spent the first several semesters taking courses that I enjoyed and…aced. And – at long last – I can no longer put off the inevitable.

I must face math and face my fear.

I am in my second week of my first summer math course and am ecstatic to report that there have no casualties, no bad words thought, no equation I could not conquer.

(Continue in prayer, please. More math reports will follow in the coming weeks.)