I suppose a bit of information on what I'm doing nowadays would be clever here, eh? Alas, I'm doing a whole lot of nothing, so I thought I would dust off an entry I had made elsewhere.
So, this is what I was thinking on February 1st, 2005...
In grade 11, I was greatly disappointed. Though other schools allowed students to drop mathematics that year if they so chose, my 'venerable' school felt that children needed an extra year of math in order to improve their otherwise feeble mental capabilities. For all ye unaware, I hate math. Absolutely despise it. For each approximation, there is only ever one answer. No variables, nothing open for interpretation, no credit for using fancy words like 'hippocampus'. Just a whole lotta numbers mocking my intelligence.
So in that year I fought, I struggled, and by year's end was taught absolutely nothing. Most compelling.
And here I am in grade 12. Finally I have a block freed up, and I can drop the flaming little monkey we refer to as math. Instead, I'll be pursuing my interest in Australian contemporary society. Umm, yay. No need to have a drama class when you know all about... well, yourself, essentially.
...But what's this? Apparently, a grand total of 1 person was looking at opting for this subject over math. Whatever does this mean? Don't you see, it's just on the horizon? Here it comes....
I HAVE MATH!
AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
ANOTHER flipping year of mathematics. ANOTHER waste of my time. ANOTHER reason to HATE EVERYTHING. Including you! *snarl*
So far, it's been a menial thing. Just stab some buttons on your calculator and presto! You're a mathematician.
Today, I chose to take a closer look at just what I was(n't) doing in this class. For one thing, bell-shaped distributions. What is this blather?? I got bored just typing the words, really.
There are a great number of faults just waiting to be exposed here (since when has finding the 'intelligence quotient of a population' been a practical situation? I don't do that on the weekend!), but the undeniable factor underlying this is that it is painfully, grotesquely boring. So boring that I can't come up with a charming witticism; it's as though its powerful monotony has sucked the very vividness from my person.
So, there I sat in class. I looked thoughtfully out the window. What is the force that generates wind? Why is the moon often visible during the day? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Such important things I would never know, instead being replaced by knowledge of box-and-whisker plots, scatterplots and bivariate data.
It was hardly fair. Like a talentless child demanding constant attention from its elders, math was consuming time that could be spent doing better things (like nailing my thumb to the floor).
Instead of intently listening like the model student I pretend to be, I invested my time playing Snake on my calculator. Also known as Nibbles, or PROGNIBB on the enigmatic calculator (I love the word 'enigma'. Until two years ago I thought it was a viral infection).
All this got me thinking; how will I fare in a real math class again? Similar to being hastily removed from a bludging math class and placed into a more serious one a couple years ago, I must admit, actually doing math work in a math class seems weird and scary to me.
