MATH, IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD! By: Nathan Lowe

Originally written by me: September 11, 2008

I have always been comfortable with math. I can do many calculations in my head, I have written hundreds of computer programs, and on many occasions I have dazzled people with my ability to track numbers. I have often argued that math is better than English because there can only be one correct answer. There is no room for personal opinion or subjectivity. The answer is correct or it isn't. Black or white, true or false, equal or not equal, greater than or less than. All these things are the things I have loved about math.

At the beginning of the Fall-Winter semester at UVU. I was looking forward to my math class. I had only just scored high enough to qualify for the math 1000 block instead of the 900 block, and I eagerly anticipated the challenge. When Professor Bartholomew suggested that we do the exercises in Chapter 1 of my Elementary & Intermediate Algebra text, as a refresher, it sounded like fun, and it was. It was like stumbling across a forgotten toy and then showing off for a new audience.

I flew through the chapter and I hardly had to take a breath to get it done. I went through it so fast, I was halfway done before I realized I didn't need to do all the problems. It was like jogging a quarter mile just because I could.

On Wednesday we started on Chapter 2. The processes he discussed in class were easy to get my head around. I found myself thinking ahead of his lecture on several occasions. But.... when I went home to work on the homework I started to get tripped up. By the time I was into Chapter 2 section 3 I was feeling very doubtful. It felt like I was barely treading water and it was getting deeper by the second. More and more often I would have to rework a problem. Once, twice, three times even four times on a couple occasions.

By the end of the second week I had lost most of the optimism I had after that first chapter. The odd thing was I could follow the lecture and be certain of everything. Then I would go home and the bottom would fall out. Nothing I tried seemed to bring me to the correct solution. I worked and reworked every single, stupid little problem. But this was no little problem. I felt I was in over my head. I started to feel like I was drowning. I started going into the math lab to see if I could figure out what was missing but it didn't help, because I did not know which questions to ask.

Coming out of Chapter 2 I was nearly ready to drop the course and I had Chapter 3 to look forward to. Oh boy, it's only going to get harder right?

Chapter 3 was completely new to me, graphing. I had never done graphing. I had written several programs that used x and y coordinates, but I had never put it into a strictly math application before. By section 3 of Chapter 2 I was feeling better. The graphing had come very naturally to me. I was back on my game. “Give me that quarter mile! No, make it a half mile!” I was back in it and it felt good to believe that the worst was behind me. To know the test was on Monday, and that it was in the bag. I would review a bit over the weekend and be ready to go.

I got an early start, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the air was crisp and invigorating as I walked to my '92 Buick Regal and pulled out of the gravel driveway. There was no traffic to speak of. I just set the cruise control for 72mph all the way to the UVU campus from my home in Goshen.

I arrived at the west parking lot at 8:40am and I had no trouble finding a good parking spot. As I climbed out of the car I was singing “I kissed a girl” to myself. It is a catchy tune and it was perfect for my mood right then. As I started the walk across the west parking lot toward the LA building, I noticed that the leaves were just starting to turn a bit on the mountains and a gust of wind chilled me, just slightly. There were some clouds forming over the mountains and the wind was getting a little bit stiffer than it had been just moments before. If I had simply paid more attention I may have realized that I was going to have a bumpy ride.

Finally I reached the north steps into the LA building and I once again heaved my backpack up the steps. I climbed stairs on my toes to get a little workout as I climbed them. I Walked through the outer doors and then at the next set of doors. I was forced to wait, just a moment, while a machine vendor maneuvered his cart into the passage way.

I turned to the right and climbed 2 more flights of stairs, on my toes, then I was on the second floor. A quick left and I saw the hall to room 231. It was pretty crowded. There were a lot of classmates who were sitting on the floor leaning back against the wall, and reviewing their notes from the past few weeks.

I found a patch of wall that was unoccupied and carefully removed my back pack so that I wouldn't bean somebody with it. I set it to my left against the flat white paint wall and then I sat next to it. “Should I pull out my notes?” I thought, “Nah, my review was thorough over the weekend I should be ok.” That Chapter 2 stuff was still tricky but I got through it, and I didn't really have any trouble. I decided to get my Nintendo DS out and play some Galaxians. I just wanted to relax for a few minutes.

I glanced at my watch. 8:52am. The door to room 131 swung open and the students from the previous class began to file out. I saved my game, put the DS back into its case and put the case back in my backpack. I stood up and began heaving my backpack off the floor. “Why does it seem so heavy some times?” I thought.

I walked into class and I was greeted again by the lack of grandeur. I had watched paper chase when I was much younger and I always felt that a university should have grand lecture halls for every subject, complete with wood veneer and elevated seating. This classroom is nothing like that. It is square with textured walls covered with flat white paint. The dull 60 Hz hum of the fluorescent lighting that makes everyone beneath its glow seem a bit lifeless. There are thirty desks crammed in the room so tightly you can barely walk the aisles between the desks.

As I crossed the front of the room it was tight. I tried to turn sideways to squeeze through and my Ogio backpack slammed into one of the desks, so I swiveled my hips a bit and tried to scoot through the gap that was barely wide enough for a 5 year old. Eventually I made my way across the room to my desk. It usually had a nice view of the LA to LI causeway but on that day the blinds were shut. Probably just because it was a test day.

I glanced at my watch, 8:58am – just a couple minutes.

I got my backpack set on the floor just as Professor Bartholomew walked in. He has this “I have been up all night” look. He looks like a math teacher. Slightly pale, with an odd hair cut. He was in well worn jeans and a faded blue “I don't get out much” pocket tee. I know that shirt. I wear it often.

9:00am on the dot.

“Pass them back. You have 50 minutes.”

While I waited for my test to get to me I noticed there were several stacks of different colored papers on his desk. Pale green, a kind of orangy yellow and light blue. I suppose they were so that he could keep straight which tests went with which class.

I received my test and filled in my name “Nathan Lowe” written in my usual cramped yet legible print style. I then filled in the class number “Math 1000-02” and the date “9/9/08” and took my first look at the first problem. 0.6x – 0.2(x – 4) = 0.4(x – 2) Solve for x

It didn't look too tricky. There were a lot of negatives in it but they should have been easy to handle. I worked it and reworked it, always getting a different answer. “How is this possible?” I thought. My review over the weekend had gone very well. Why was this problem being such a “Problem”. After several attempts I glanced at my watch. 9:32am. Oh boy, half of the time was gone. I knew that my only chance was to get through the rest of the test as fast a s possible. If I could get through all of the problems I could get a passing grade.

It wasn't happening. Every problem threw me for a loop. I was very flustered, at this point, and almost certain I wasn't going to pass. I had never failed a test before. I had received my share of “D's” but never had I received an “F”.

I looked at my watch again. 9:42am. 8 minutes left. No way I was going to finish. I had only been able to complete 4 more problems in the last 10 minutes and there were still 10 more. I continued to work feverishly, but I was hitting a roadblock on every equation.

“Times up. Pass your tests forward.”

Doom! I had failed my first test – and in math! I was good at math. I had reviewed over the weekend. I had completed all of my homework but to no avail. The test was over. I had failed.

For the rest of the day I rolled it around in my head. “How did this happen?” I thought I was prepared. I had trouble with the homework but I was always able to work it out.

Was there something wrong with me? Was I losing it? Had I been wrong to champion math for all this time? It didn't make sense at all. How could math, my anchor, my predictable friend, suddenly become shifty and unreliable? It was like I had slipped into some parallel universe where math was not easy or logical. I had always loved and understood math. It had been a rock in a sea of ambiguity, a center in this subjective and opinionated world.

Slowly I began to realize, that it was not Math's fault that I had failed. It was mine. I had taken it for granted that I would be good. I had never been challenged by math before – and I saw no reason to think it would start to challenge me now. I needed to get faster and more precise in the process of solving these equations.

It had just taken too much time. The answers came too slowly and to make it worse I didn't have confidence in my answers. I would check them by reworking the problem again, and in the course of checking I must have been making new mistakes.

I have learned a new respect for math, and that has opened the door for me to pursue a new level of understanding. I look forward to all the challenges that lie before me, and will meet them head on, with hard work and determination and maybe, just a little more humility.

Math, it's all in your Head! by Nathan L. Lowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at nathan-lowe.blogspot.com.