I have issues with math, or more accurately, math has issues with me. I like math; I like to think that it is interesting and useful. My best friend’s brain works mathematically; he works through abstract concepts of time and scheduling, even seemingly mindless activities such as card and board games, with a sort of innate and effortless numerical precision. Where I might spend hours committing a mathematical equation to memory or laboring over a homework problem, he simply looks at a formula and can figure it out in an instant. Maybe mathematic ability is hereditary and I can blame my parents, or maybe it’s not and I can blame that time my third grade teacher quit in the middle of the school year and we never learned how to do multiplication in our heads. Whatever the reason, I am not good at math. Ever since that time in third grade, I’ve fallen behind in my arithmetic abilities. To be honest, I still can’t do multiplication in my head, I sometimes count on my fingers, and I purposely chose a career field where I’ll never have to use calculus. Nevertheless, years of falling behind in my math classes have taught me the necessary skills to keep up with my peers. Within three weeks of my first statistics course I could already tell I was struggling. Immediately, I found the Statistics Lab on campus and went to seek assistance bright and early one Wednesday morning. From that point on you could catch me every Wednesday morning in the Statistics Lab working to make mathematical concepts click inside my brain. When you’re struggling with a subject it helps to find someone to explain it to you; Maybe they’ll explain it in a different way so that it makes sense to you, but searching for answers online can take hours and you might not always find the answers you are looking for. When you feel yourself falling behind, immediately get yourself together and go find help. You are struggling because you can’t help yourself, you need someone else to come help you out, and that’s okay. The largest struggle humans have is admitting their faults and not seeking help to change them. This can be applied to one’s ego or math. It’s important to recognize when something isn’t working for you anymore, put your pride aside, and change what is needed; Whether that is altering your behavior or your thought. For example, math doesn’t have issues with me but I have difficulty conceptualizing numbers and formulas.
