Math + Steph = ......Genius???

It's no secret that I have always shared a love/hate relationship with math - minus the love. Subsequently after being introduced to long division in 5th grade, my mother toted me to a math tutor on a weekly basis. But, at that point, I still had no idea my future in math would be a dark tunnel of decimal points, digits and even more dreaded division.

I struggled with math in 6th grade, too, but it wasn't until 7th grade that I officially declared war with math. Just when I thought nothing could be worse than long division, I was introduced to algebra. Worse than that, I was introduced to the algebra teacher, Mr. Smith. This guy eagerly sniffed out the fear of math in 7th graders, so (not surprisingly) I was assigned to sit front and center in his classroom. His classroom, by the way, was so clean and organized you could perform surgery on the desks. He drew X's on the floor to ensure that, when all desks were placed on said X's, they'd always be lined up properly. And, if he ever noticed papers or notebooks on his desk a bit askew, he'd pause to line them up so everything was parallel. But, besides his obsession with cleanliness and organization, math seemed to be this guy's whole freakin' world. In fact, on the first day of class, he shattered any sort of youthful idealism I had by declaring, "math - not love - makes the world go around." Great.

As you may have gathered, I was not a star student in his class. In fact, I had so much trouble with algebra that I can recall more than a few times, in response to his frustration with me, he threw chalk and erasers. Creating a plume of chalk dust in his otherwise pristine classroom cemented my suspicion that he was, in fact, really angry at me.

But, I was angry at him, too. For instance, every day we'd go through the drill of him asking me to put my glasses on, and I'd have to dig the hideous specs out of my book bag. (I already had braces, so even though I was blind as a bat, I hated wearing my glasses due to the whole 'nerd alert' double whammy factor). Also, he once made me miss our school's ice cream social by keeping me after class to help with something giving me extra trouble. Oh, and by 'help,' I mean, 'scream at me.' That was the last straw. He finally broke me. I cried right in front of him. He won. Math won. Math: 9,632,000 Steph: 0

In 8th grade, I somehow managed to skate through math by the skin of my teeth, and I'm pretty sure that was only because the teacher was sympathetic to the fact I'd been in Mr. Smith's class the previous year. Then, in 9th grade, I failed Algebra. FAILED. The teacher sent interim reports home to my parents praising me about how hard I tried and that my attitude was good, but the actual math part just wouldn't click. So, to salvage my GPA, I decided to stick to non-college prep math the next two years.

Even though I always did well in my other subjects in high school, it still bothered me that I never passed college prep algebra. As a result, I did the unthinkable my senior year: I signed up to re-take that algebra class that had defeated me as a freshman. On the first day of school, I walked into Mr. Hackim's class and declared myself doomed. You see, Mr. Hackim was the varsity baseball coach and had a reputation for being incredibly intimidating. I could instantly tell that this burly man wasn't going to take crap from any punk kid who dared try to provoke him. But, as my insides were curdling during roll call, he walked over to me, looked me up and down, and proclaimed to the freshman students, "Stephanie is in charge." For the first time in a math class since 5th grade, I exhaled. I ended up doing really well in that class, too. Mr. Hackim even sent a letter to my parents explaining how he "would stay in teaching forever if he could be guaranteed to always have students like me." Apparently, Mr. Hackim wasn't so intimidating after all. And, I happily learned, neither was algebra.

After passing my one required math course in college, I figured math would finally be shelved for good, and was satisfied to come away with only a few battle scars. But, during my senior year, I randomly signed up for a computer class I heard would be an 'easy A.' I learned a bit about Microsoft Excel in that class, and for the first time ever, math made sense. The elusive math 'a ha' moment was, at last, actualized. It wasn't just the formulas that made more sense to me in spreadsheet form, it was applying math problems to real life situations, i.e. financing a car. I learned to like math so much that I began creating personal budgets on Excel, and have been doing so ever since. Additionally, I do math for a living now. Even though I had zero finance experience, my company promoted me to my current position based on my Excel knowledge and organizational skills (no doubt an attribute I inadvertently inherited from Mr. Smith). As I've mentioned many times before, I'm not passionate about my job, but discovering I was actually good at something involving a lot of math was empowering.

So, after reading about my rocky and, at times, taumatizing history with math, you might be as shocked as I was to learn that, after receiving my official scores in the mail last week, I scored highest in MATH on the Illinois Basic Skills & Content Area tests. WHAT?! Yes! I called my parents and brother right away, who, recalling my 7th grade horrors, were quick to reference Mr. Smith's name.

The lesson to learn here, kids, is that even though you may struggle with something at one point in your life, it doesn't mean that you can't or won't conquer it at another point. I predicted that thoughts of Mr. Smith's class would haunt me for the rest of my life, and they have, just not in the way I thought. For example, it was his voice I kept hearing while studying for the tests, and not in a bad way. I finally 'get' that it wasn't that he didn't like me, it was that he knew I had the potential to understand the material, and he was frustrated that I had failed to see my own potential.

Finally, Mr. Smith is an example of the type of teacher I want to be (minus the chalk/eraser pitching, of course). I'm talking about not letting any child fly under the radar, no matter how much they'd rather disappear into the background.