It's only a matter of time before I will be an expert at complicated East African languages and, yet, still not be able to do 8th grade math as presented by ETS.
I invited a group of four folks to join me on the couch at Starbucks tonight...they didn't want to disturb me. But I assured them it was NO problem. I wasn't sure how to break it to them that if they gabbed on in a language I didn't know it was just like listening to classical music to me. As long as I can stand to feel safe, I just hear it as the calming melody that keeps me trudging through the problems.
As soon as the fear that is mathophobia (I'm sure there is a technical term but my obsession has not deepened to the point that I need to know it now) grips me, I turn my attention more to the conversation that I can't understand than to the numbers, letters and gibberish trying to pass itself of as English in my book. I imagine that I am catching phrases here and there, building an internal vocabulary list. I believe that I can make out parts of words and begin to build complicated language maps in my mind...how is this related to French, Spanish or Italian, maybe ancient Greek? I start to convince myself that I really need to listen to the conversation more carefully and stare less intensely at the garbled mess on my paper.
When the young man asked me what I was studying this evening, he couldn't help himself...the craziness in my book was as appealing to him as his unknown language was to me, I showed him the book and asked him what language they were speaking. After two tries, I still can only say that it is some East African language with hints of Hebrew (his explanation not my crazy musings I assure you). I had to admit I was pretty sure I would be learning to speak his language soon as the math thing really wasn't going well. He allowed as the book reminded him of painful college days.
Our conversation made his pregnant wife uncomfortable...so I returned to my terrible book of torture called GRE review.But it really is only a matter of time...thankfully, the course ends November 16th and I must take the damn test very soon afterwards.
yes math is crazy, is what I thought while I jogged today...i went jogging after the TA went through a problem in which she filled up the chalkboards once, erased, and then filled them up again.......for one problem. all I can say is take one piece at a time get good at it to where you don't have to think about and then do another technique...the other thought that came to mind was being a child...and putting different shaped blocks into their respective places...equations are kind of like that...they give you that a shape can look like this and then you look around at the different math pieces you've been given and you look for "this" and you insert the shape you were given...sometimes you have transform "this" into something else (usually by multiplying it by 1 in all its different incarnations...sometimes you flip the number to get it too look like this and well all else fails you multiply both sides by the same thing...one in all its different incarnations...I wish I had better advice. But just keep plowing away I know you can do it.
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