Geek Alert

Another quarter of classes started last week. Once again, I am endeavoring to exercise my mind by taking on another class. This time, I leave the subjective interpretations of the English department and return to my roots in square roots.

To those of you who have only known me as Creative Deema, the writer, the scrapbooker, or the budding photographer, this may come as a slight surprise to you, but when I first started college, my major was. . . MATH.

I was always really good in math. While I was never the genius math whiz that TV shows like Numbers are based around, I never really struggled with the subject while in high school. In fact (here's my first geeky admission of the night) I used to race one of my other semi-geeky classmates in finishing our geometry assignments before even leaving the class. Why? Well, because it was FUN, of course.

When I started college, I had no doubt in my mind about what field of study I wanted to go into. I sat down with my first ever college adviser and we discussed what classes I should get started with. She looked at my ever-impressive ACT scores and decided that I would do well to start my math career in Pre-Calculus. While I was rather impressed that my score put me at that level, I felt hesitant because I was pretty sure that Trigonometry was a foundational building block for Calculus and I hadn't yet been through that. I told her that I didn't think that was the right place for me, that in reality, I just test REALLY well when it comes to multiple choice and I really wasn't ready for Pre-Cal yet. But she said I would do fine, so I signed up and started the class.

For the first time ever, I struggled in my math class. The teacher kept talking about stuff I had no idea about and seemed frustrated to have to explain things to me. It turned out that (as I had suspected) I really was missing a very fundamental piece of information. But I continued trying. I managed to get a C out of the class. It was the first ever C that I received in math that was not due to a lack of trying.

A C qualified me to move on into Calculus, but I wound up with the same instructor and still missing the same foundation. I was drowning in Calculus and knew it was only going to get harder. So that was when I made the first of several switches to a new major, turning almost full-circle and winding up in the English major.

I was always just a little sad about that decision. Ultimately I did get my math fix by minoring in Accounting and that made me feel a little better, but it's always haunted me that I let Calculus beat me like that.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I felt so good after completing my Creative Writing and Literature classes that I decided it was time to conquer that math dragon. I knew just signing up for a Calculus class would be stupid, seeing as I couldn't do it before and it's been over 10 years since I've taken a math class now. I contacted the Head of the Math Department on campus and discussed with him where the best place to start would be. We looked over some of the finals for different classes that he had on file and we decided on Intermediate Algebra for me.

Tuesday was the first class. The instructor went over the usual beginning-of-the-quarter stuff, then dove right in. She started talking about stuff that sounded completely foreign to me. "Poly-somethings" and "trinomials" and some method she called FOIL. I had no clue what she was saying. But when she turned around and started writing on the board, it all started coming back and I realized that the language of math might have changed, but the numbers never do.

By the end of class, I knew that I was in the right place. As much as I enjoyed my English classes, they always took a little warming up to for me. There was always that doubt in the back of my mind that I might not be able to do it. But with math, I felt like I had returned home. It was familiar and comforting. And as if I needed more proof, I found myself working not only on the assigned homework all week, but also the extra practice worksheets she gave us and even glancing through the problems we weren't assigned to do. Why? Because it's FUN, of course.

So there you have it: I'm a math geek and proud of it. And totally looking forward to the journey that will lead me to taking on the Calculus dragon.