Why Mathematical Impairment Aggravates My Insecurities
I should be doing math. I had to do only 30 problems tonight. Instead, I did four and then broke down crying.
When I was growing up, I was called a genius. By everyone. My parents, my teachers, my friends. It seemed to be true - I was good at absolutely everything I did. Not amazingly brilliant Harvard-at-twelve sort of kid, but it never took me long to learn any concept and apply it to whatever I was doing, learn any physical skill and perform it with competence (within my physical limitations, of course). This was even true with mathematics... until I got to around 7th grade. While I was in the gifted program learning college research techniques and courtroom procedures, I was barely passing math. I was twelve and I could draw a map of the world from memory, write an essay, play two sports, defeat mass amounts of video games, fix small computer problems, read fourteen books a week, and do punnett squares in my sleep, but I couldn't do basic algebra. I could understand the concepts and formulas well enough, but I couldn't do the actual work worth shit.
This trend has continued through high school and into college. I breeze through my classes with A's and B's with little effort on my part besides the tedious work (typing the essays, writing the outlines, etc). I have, of course, developed a sort of laze with these things - they're easy, so I'll do them later. And it works 95% of the time. I can do them later and I do get high grades on the work. However, my over-inflated ego hits a wall when it comes to math. Not only am I not fantabulous at it, but I'm actually bad at it. Really bad. Worse than many other people I know. And it's honestly the only thing I can say I'm truly, horribly bad at. Other things I say I'm bad at are either A) excuses to get out of doing things, B) phobias or anxieties that I want to avoid (like cooking or driving - this goes with A and is the usual reason), or C) Things I'm actually good or at least competent at but don't like doing (like most sports and social interactions like "small talk". Running doesn't count, that's a way to get to places faster.)
Being bad at math makes me feel like a horrible failure as a person. I feel like I let many people down by being bad at math. It would be ok if I was bad at other things to the degree that I'm bad at math, but I'm not and it hurts. Doing math gives me mass amounts of anxiety and I don't like it. I can't just slog through it like I do with things I don't enjoy. I can't pretend. It's not that I don't care - it's that I want to be awesome and it's just not happening.
EDIT: I dropped math. Obviously I have problems and need to get my shit together before I attempt this.
When I was growing up, I was called a genius. By everyone. My parents, my teachers, my friends. It seemed to be true - I was good at absolutely everything I did. Not amazingly brilliant Harvard-at-twelve sort of kid, but it never took me long to learn any concept and apply it to whatever I was doing, learn any physical skill and perform it with competence (within my physical limitations, of course). This was even true with mathematics... until I got to around 7th grade. While I was in the gifted program learning college research techniques and courtroom procedures, I was barely passing math. I was twelve and I could draw a map of the world from memory, write an essay, play two sports, defeat mass amounts of video games, fix small computer problems, read fourteen books a week, and do punnett squares in my sleep, but I couldn't do basic algebra. I could understand the concepts and formulas well enough, but I couldn't do the actual work worth shit.
This trend has continued through high school and into college. I breeze through my classes with A's and B's with little effort on my part besides the tedious work (typing the essays, writing the outlines, etc). I have, of course, developed a sort of laze with these things - they're easy, so I'll do them later. And it works 95% of the time. I can do them later and I do get high grades on the work. However, my over-inflated ego hits a wall when it comes to math. Not only am I not fantabulous at it, but I'm actually bad at it. Really bad. Worse than many other people I know. And it's honestly the only thing I can say I'm truly, horribly bad at. Other things I say I'm bad at are either A) excuses to get out of doing things, B) phobias or anxieties that I want to avoid (like cooking or driving - this goes with A and is the usual reason), or C) Things I'm actually good or at least competent at but don't like doing (like most sports and social interactions like "small talk". Running doesn't count, that's a way to get to places faster.)
Being bad at math makes me feel like a horrible failure as a person. I feel like I let many people down by being bad at math. It would be ok if I was bad at other things to the degree that I'm bad at math, but I'm not and it hurts. Doing math gives me mass amounts of anxiety and I don't like it. I can't just slog through it like I do with things I don't enjoy. I can't pretend. It's not that I don't care - it's that I want to be awesome and it's just not happening.
EDIT: I dropped math. Obviously I have problems and need to get my shit together before I attempt this.