Inspired by <quirkstreet>.
My math life, long since hidden and secret from the world, began as a battle of wits between my mother and the counselors at Arthur Road Middle School.
As it happened, in order for a student to reach calculus by his senior year, he had two options. Either start algebra in eighth grade or double up planar geometry and advanced algebra in the tenth grade. My mom wanted to sign me up for eighth grade only to have the counselor tell her that I was too stupid to take it.
First. The decision was made according to seventh grade math grades, which sucked because the class used an in-classroom-only set of books. 24 volumes, each student on a different one at a time. I hated that. Yeah, put a hyperactive sugar-binge child in a room with 22 other students and then tell him to focus on a book. There was a reason why all of my homework was done in my bedroom, by myself…
Second. Do not ever tell my mother that one of her children is dumb in math.
*whew*
Her face was purple for weeks.
She then filled me in on the events. I was just as pissed. So I had regular eighth grade math. I got my own textbook to take home. Straight A’s. Dumb shits.
So. Five years of high school math in four years of high school. I was on a drive to spite those counselors. Of course, I did it.
Analytical geometry was the only slip up for me. I had a bad teacher and just couldn’t grasp her points. That was a half year class, three grading periods. B, B and C.
Totalling up the years, that would be thirty grading periods of math: basic algebra, planar geometry, advanced algebra, trigonometry/an. geometry, and AP calculus. Two Bs, one C and twenty-seven As… F*ck the counselors.
I started college in mechanical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. I had received a five out of five on my AP calc exam. I had been one of three students studying for the BC exam but I turned coward and went for the easy. Yeah, easy…
At UC, once I finished the last quarter of calculus, it was differential equations, which I remember little of at this point. Those were not my favorite years. Perhaps, the darkest years of my life really… but at some point, I realized that I simply could not be an engineer. It was based purely on spending time around the other engineering students and my coworkers from my co-op position.
I just couldn’t be that. Their free time, their extra moments, their breaks, their weekends…
They never closed the textbook, they never turned off the calculator.
As time passed, I stopped using most all of it, so it went away. I could once integrate any equation without using substitution. About the only higher math I still use is geometry. I mean, visual design and layout is quite impossible without it, whether one is aware of that fact or not.
But that is the secret math life of this particular, nutso, big, twisted art-fag.
My engineer peeked out when I was replacing the timing belt the other day at work. I may have scared a few people that are accustomed to thinking I am silly and pointless.
I like doing that – both sides of it really: allowing them to see me as silly and then watching when they realize otherwise…
Remember, I have a sadist in there somewhere, too.
gryphon's hole 