Maths and Other Adventures of Being a Girl in the World

I was listening to a great podcast on Unladylike about women and math and how many of us have been pushed into thinking we're "BAD AT MATH" for lots of reasons when maybe it's just about other factors conspiring to create this narrative that hurts us. 

That was a really bad synopsis, but what I got out of it is that we can retrain our brains to think about math as just something to learn and that nobody is inherently BAD at math. 

I think I have had a very loopy roller coaster of a narrative when it comes to my math story and I want to share it with you because it's important. Because at different phases of my life, I was good AND bad at math and I really think that learning in our society is based in a one-way-only model that doesn't allow room for different ways of learning and problem solving. 

Where to begin? At Montessori School of course. I was a Montessori student from pre-school through 1st grade.  Math was never just a subject. We had counting bead blocks and games around numbers and, you may be surprised to know this, but I realllllly took to that quickly, faster than I took to words and reading.

In fact, I was a slow-to-start reader. I just didn't want to. My teachers were very patient with this and I was encouraged to try at my own pace. When I started, they couldn't stop me and of course now I'm someone who proudly declares my love of reading and writing, but I wonder if I'd feel that way if I were forced into it when I wasn't quite ready?

Math was much the same there. We'd just try it out. I remember in 1st grade trying math problems that were 3rd grade level (I didn't know it at the time; I discovered this when I actually got to 3rd grade). Learning at Montessori really encouraged kids to figure things out their own way, to creatively problem solve, something I still pride myself on my ability to do. 

Then I left Montesorri for Christian school. 2nd grade when well for all subjects, really, which I attest to having a great teacher (shout out to Mrs. Kinney!), but 3rd grade was my first brush with math misery. Mrs. Noonan didn't so much as teach math but assign homework designed to make us do the problems so many times that we'd somehow magically know how to do it. 

This was also the first time my dad attempted to tutor me in math. I clearly wasn't learning it at school and he was the obvious choice being the resident Math Genius (TM) in the house. And my dad really is naturally proficient with numbers, the kind of person who does advanced calculations in his head. But therein lies the problem. He was never able to teach it at my level nor did he had patience if I struggled with what he deemed an easy concept (which at 3rd grade level, was basically everything).

Cue: lots of tears trying to learn from dad and me feeling very very stupid and my first ever feelings of "BEING BAD AT MATH." 

Mrs. Kinney again saved me. My parents ended up hiring her to tutor me in 3rd grade math and I entered 4th grade basically on track, but still having my confidence shaken. 

The next chunk of years were fairly unremarkable math-wise. I did well overall but would melt down quickly when faced with a challenge. My dad still was a bad tutor, but was basically me only real resource outside of school. My favorite areas of math learning were word problems. Having context and something to visualize was much easier for me than just memorizing steps and formulas. I always wanted to understand the WHY of a problem, why it worked. I struggled particularly with fractions and percentages because they were presented to me as something to just memorize and then it would just WORK. But I never understood the underlying mechanism, so I struggled to retain the info.

Still, I did fine. I did especially well in 8th grade pre-algebra with Mr. Mangum. The man was enthusiasm incarnate in everything he did, including teaching. He was basically a combo of Chris Traeger, Tom Selleck, and Terry Crews.

But with a flattop

And even though I was still at a religious school and Mr. M was as passionate about the bible as he was about working out, he never judged me or made me feel less-than and he was damn smart and kind. He took time with problems. He broke them down. He didn't move on until we all got it. Under his teaching, I did extremely well.

Then came 9th grade Algebra 1. I forget the man's real name, because we all called him Mr. Wonton. I do remember that he looked like one half of a specific Nineties country duo. Mr. Wonton was a crap teacher. And he barely taught. Kids that did well in his class did so because he favored them (aka, the boys) or because it came easy. I struggled. It hit my 14yo self esteem HARD. 

By mid-year, I was failing. My parents set up a parent-teacher conference to find out why (this was before my mom totally checked out mentally). He said, IN FRONT OF ME, "Don't worry. It's okay if she can't learn; she's a girl." That phrase seared itself onto my fragile young pysche and I have never forgotten it. The fucker. 

Well, needless to say, my parents were furious. They complained to the principal, who was a woman and (DUN DUN DUUUUUN) got her degrees in math. Retribution was had and that asshole was not asked back to that school. But here's where they made the big mistake and REALLY fucked me over: they passed me. I get why! They felt bad. They didn't want a law suit. But, you guys, passing me did me the biggest disservice ever, because math is all about fundamentals, fundamentals which I hadn't learned. 

I went to a shitty-ass tutoring program over the summer which was supposed to catch me up, but was really just a way to spend 2 hours a week in a freezing classroom working by myself on problems that I didn't understand and which nobody would check. I wish my parents could still get their money back. And I entered 10th grade at a public high school woefully unprepared. 

Needless to say, the next couple years were ones of struggle. I can't lament them totally because it was at after-school math tutoring where I met my best friend. But I spent those years barely passing or failing math classes and feeling VERY stupid in the process. It felt hopeless. I was just dumb, I thought, there's no way I could ever understand it. Little did I know it's just because I'd never learned the basics. 

Would you hire an Accountant who didn't have some kind of Accounting degree? No. So why was I expected to pass levels of math that I hadn't passed the pre-requisites for? Why did the State of California even let that happen?

Anyway, I had to take a "Consumer Math" class my senior year just to graduate high school, a class filled with burnouts and cheaters, but I actually really liked it. It was practical. We learned about markups and taxes and credit card APR and household budgeting, etc. I was good at it. It made total sense. And pretty soon other kids in the class were trying to cheat off MY tests. 

By that point, though, with my grades in suckage, college was a pipe dream, and my parents couldn't pay for it anyway. I never even took the SATs, knowing I'd fail the math portions and I wasn't going to college anyway, so what was the point? 

After graduation, I went to the good ol' community college, which, in SO MANY WAYS, was the best place for me and I am so glad my path took me there and am a big proponent of community colleges (but that's a blog post for another day). Anyway, they tested me in English and Math skills and placed me in an Algebra 1 class...finally. 

I had an excellent instructor who helped me break it down and understand it and even help me be okay with memorizing when you just gotta memorize. I excelled. I was suddenly good at math again. I took several more courses during my time at the CC and did well.

I went to fashion school next, studying merchandise marketing, and found I surprisingly really liked the retail math, allocations and buying and markups. They made so much sense to me. And having a real-world application was valuable. I had buy-in. I was invested. I took an applied business course and wrote my first business plan, working out the projections and yearly proposed budgets with pleasure. I didn't end up staying in the fashion world, but I still use that knowledge in my job.

I did eventually go back to get my BA and I needed one more math course to graduate. I forget its title, but it was a combo of statistics, trig, and logic. I liked it! Just to be safe, I'd dutifully go to the bi-weekly tutoring that my school offered, but I rarely needed it; it was just nice to have someone check my work and feel validated. 

Cut to the present. I have an okay relationship with the math. I know I am a problem solver and I excel when I'm able to break it down to its parts and see how it works. I need to get the mechanism, not just memorize. But I still carry that baggage. I still freak out sometimes, usually when my male colleagues do a bunch of calculations really fast and look at me like I know what they're doing. I just don't do math that quickly, but if you show me the formulas, I'll get it. 

I plan events, which require budgets. I order merch for giveaways, which requires all kinds of calculations to get the budget just right. I have to calculate fees and tax rates and then our company markup on top of that. I use formulas, but I couldn't do that if I didn't understand HOW the formulas work.

Even just today, I was working on a budget in Smartsheet and I knew what I wanted it to do but I didn't know how, so I played with it until I figured out the formula. And learning it so hands-on means I won't forget that now. I broke it down and I know how I got those numbers. And when I got it, I literally sang out loud and annoyed others around me. But I give no fucks. I will celebrate the AHA moment, dammit!

It's still really easy to get discouraged and the minute someone looks at me like I'm stupid or I should know something that I just don't, I struggle not to melt down. But if you just give me a minute and don't put me on the spot, I'll get it. I need a moment to let my brain do its thing. 

So I think we gals just need to write our narratives and look at the places others have failed us at THE THING, the thing we label ourselves bad at, at assess whether we're actually bad at it or if we just weren't taught it properly or for how we learn or our individual brains work. It's okay to not be good at something. I don't have great eye-hand coordination, but I don't have to beat myself up for that. I have other kinesthetic and artistic strengths, like swimming or dancing or photography and it's okay that brain doesn't want to draw a straight line or I struggle to see the path of a ball that is thrown or rolled. 

Same with math! I'm not going to do calculus in my head like my dad, but I don't have to buy into this narrative that I suck and am stupid at math because of it. There are other kinds of math that my brain takes to and that I can pick up when I work WITH my learning style. 

Maybe that's that wisdom that they say comes with age; you learn to work with yourself, to meet yourself where you are.