and I would just like to vent about how much (and why) I hate math. Math, out of all the subjects we’re taught, always feels like it’s the one that is never made very accessible. It has tight rules, strict memorization, and a steep learning curve. This always has made it hard for me, especially the memorization part. You’re taught hundreds of different formulas and equations and tons of different ways you need to be able to solve an equation for each and every different way the equation can appear (a negative in a weird spot, a fraction in a weird spot). This really makes it tough for me in particular. It’s not for a lack of effort that I don’t do well, it’s always a lack of memory. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast in the morning. If I think of an idea of something to draw, I have to write it down immediately, lest I forget it within a minute. When I’m doing something on a calculator, if I have to calculate the denominator, I have to silently repeat it to myself so that way I don’t forget it within the few seconds I have to clear it from my calculator to put in the numerator. So basically, when the course wants me to memorize several different ways to solve problems as well as work arounds for all the several variations of each problem, it gets a little bit… impossible??? Tutoring doesn’t help because I think tutoring really only helps if you don’t understand the math. I understand it just fine, I just can’t remember it when the exam comes, and that’s even after studying the whole two days before the exam and doing homework during all that time and HAVING LEARNED ALL THIS LAST SEMESTER. Math gets a little fucking frustrating when it feels like there is literally nothing I can do to pass the class because the entire curriculum is stacked against me. Another major gripe I have with it is that it’s so fucking often that I find the way curriculum is written (so math textbooks) is absolutely terrible. It’s always written by someone who clearly is really good at math but has no fucking clue how to write for an audience. They simply can never seem to write it in an accessible way, to explain things in a way that makes sense to someone who… y’know… doesn’t already know how to solve the problem? It’s so unprofessional honestly, I don’t know how these people can have such high level degrees and be in a position, not to simply teach, but to completely shape the curriculum, if they have no fucking idea how to write math down in a way that makes sense to people who aren’t good at math. (Which in my experience is a majority of people.) This makes it all the more frustrating, because once I find an explanation of it that isn’t written this way it all makes so much sense to me. It’s not that I hate math or am bad at it, it’s always that it is taught terribly and in the most biased way possible. It seems so incompetently taught and that is just fucking shameful. Added on to all this is the defeating idea that… you’ll never make use of this math in a real life setting? You learn history and you can use that to make good decisions in the present, to avoid making the same mistakes your predecessors did. You learn english, because knowing how to write is actually important, maybe not in all jobs, but in a lot of jobs being able to write and write well is important. (AS WELL AS KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE FOR WHEN YOU DO WRITE SOMETHING COUGH COUGH) Sciences… admittedly a lot of people might not get much use out of it, but understanding the basics of a lot of them might help people not be as fucking insanely ignorant as so many people are nowadays. But then there’s math. Up until algebra 2, I could see uses for each one. Even algebra can be useful in real life, it helps you understand more complicated things you might actually have to figure out. Geometry has some use if you ever need to build something, statistics is useful in so many fields of work. But after that…it doesn’t feel useful? It feels so useless in most jobs, you’re wasting your time stressing out and trying to memorize all this horse shit that you will never see again. The only place any of this math is useful is in the next class, and the only place that math will be useful is in the class after it, which seems kind of pointless because at some point it peaks and you have no use for ANY of it. THIS MAKES IT SO MUCH HARDER TO EVEN WORK UP THE MOTIVATION TO TRY BECAUSE YOU ARE SERIOUSLY GETTING JACK SHIT OUT OF THE CLASS. It’s difficult, poorly taught, and borderline useless. Honestly, if you’re good at math, consider yourself lucky, you might not have to deal with this as much as other people do, and please if you ever go on to teach math, understand that the people you’re teaching ARE NOWHERE NEAR AS EXPERIENCED WITH IT AS YOU ARE. Write it like you’re teaching it to someone who knows nothing about it…cause… y’know… they don’t. That’s my little math rant, sorry to fill up your dashboard with this shit. I’m just bitter as all hell, mostly about the whole memory portion of it. My struggles with memorization makes the class just that much more irritating. (Also how often a problem is explained with a way to solve it then you’re given a problem that’s can’t be solved with the thing you were just taught?? and no amount of critical thinking helps because as it turns out you just have to do something straight up completely different??? like wtf is up with that??? why would you teach me how to solve a problem only to test me on something that can’t be solved that way…)