I Hate Math! What Am I Going To Use It At, Anyway?

How many of you have asked yourselves various versions of this question?

I’ve just heard it the other day in a show. It got me thinking about a very good friend of mine who told me before (and still does whenever the issue comes up) that he’s never been good at Math. “I never planned on being an engineer or accountant or financial adviser or any of those things that require you to know more than adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing some simple numbers. I can do that and that’s all I need to know. When it comes to Math all I ever did in school was to get some passing grades and that was just fine with me.”

Before I go any further I must confess that I am a bit subjective about the whole topic as I’ve always liked Math. I never really took it to the extreme (as to make a hobby out of it or to become a Math teacher or anything like that) but it has always been my favorite subject in school. It was the one subject I was never afraid of when it came to tests, exams, papers and stuff. (And I was always helping others, thank you very much.)

Now that I think back at all the time I “wasted” on Math without having any direct results, I realize that it is probably the one subject in school that prepared me for life. That’s right my friends. Math prepares you for life. By learning math you learn to see patterns in everything around you (and in 90% of the situations life is all about patterns); it teaches you to make connections between pieces of information; it teaches you to solve puzzles (puzzles of the life); it teaches you that in order to get any type of results in life you have to follow certain steps and formulas (how many times have you wished you knew the formula to success – no matter what type of success we’re talking about); it teaches you that everything in life has a cause and an effect, that everything happens for a reason and that there’s a result of everything that happens in life; it teaches you how to look for solutions to certain situations and how to find the first steps you need to take in anything you have to do. If you believe I don’t know what I’m talking about you might want to check this web site.

“Well, of course you Math people are going to say only good things about it. You like it, love it maybe, and understand it. It’s easy for you to talk.” No, my friend. Understanding Math has nothing to do with what I’ve just said. Besides that, I have no interest to talk nice about Math. I’m not a teacher and my job doesn’t even involve any complicated Math (just simple Arithmetics). What I’ve just said about it comes out of pure belief and practical observations around me.

“Whatever you say. The problem is that I just don’t get it!”. I’m really sorry if I sound harsh, but you don’t get it because you don’t try hard enough. I am a strong believer that each and everyone of us is born with equal basic intellectual capacities. However, at some point in time, for one reason or another we decide to cultivate just a few. The reasons vary. From this moment on we’re working on what we think we’re good at and ignore the other stuff, thus becoming good at what we think we’re good at and getting sloppy at the other ones. Because it’s all about practice. You’re good at what you practice the most.

I’ll give you three examples in support of my theory.

As you probably realized (by my writing style, my English and if you read my About page) English is my second language. I was born and raised in Romania. I learned part of my English in school. I had no real problems with it as I liked it from the very beginning. I had, however, classmates who were on the verge of failing their year just because they could not get passing grades at English. When they realized the gravity of the situation they decided it was time to unfold the mysteries of the language. And guess what? They got it. It wasn’t easy. But they worked hard and realized it’s not really that difficult. They just had to want to do it, sit down and concentrate at what they had to do and, eventually, it all came naturally. A couple of them (who kept on going with their efforts) got quite good at it. I used this example to emphasize that this is the way things are with everything, not just Math. You have to want to do it, sit down and concentrate at what you’re about to study.

I’m going to use another example that goes the other way. As I mentioned before, Math has always been my favorite subject. Naturally, other type of subjects (and I’m especially talking about Literature) were anything but something I enjoyed. Until a couple of years ago, when I had to take on Composition 1 & 2. I was terrified. I was never good at writing stuff (Composition 1) or literature analysis (Composition 2). But I decided I was going to give it a try. I just took on the challenge one step at a time. And guess what? Before I knew it, people in my class were asking me to read my essays each and every single class. Even the professors loved them. It certainly sounds like bragging. And of course my writing skills could use a good deal of improvement. But that’s not the point. The point is that I am the living proof that if you put your mind to it you can get good at anything.

The only exception I can personally think of is physical disability. For example, one of the many jobs I took on was construction. Actually I tried doing construction twice (altogether about a year). I have finally gave up on it because my back was killing me. No matter how many types of supporting belts I tries, I just couldn’t make it work.

I started with Math and look what I ended up talking about. That was my intention from the very beginning. The bottom line, as I have mentioned it a couple of times throughout the post, is that anyone can get a grip of anything on this planet. Our brain is such an amazing thing. You can understand and get good at anything. You just have to want to (and for that you need to understand what’s going to do for you – see Math above) and really concentrate on what you will have to do and learn.

I wish you lots of good luck and don’t hesitate to let me know how things are working between you and Math (or anything else for that matter).

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Human Nature, School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.