So… Dyscalculia is weird…
It's always great to finally put a name to something I've known intuitively for a long time. The latest addition to my neurodiversity dictionary is dyscalculia.
The best definition so far is from the British Dyslexia Association:
Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers… It will be unexpected in relation to age, level of education and experience." (emphasis mine.)
Throughout my education, the assumption is you can get better at mathematics through practice. Well, I didn’t, and I haven’t. The only maths questions I understood in primary and high school were geometry, because I could draw the shapes and angles. I only passed maths and statistics classes in university because we could use calculators.
I still struggle with mental calculations, can't estimate sizes or distances, can't do unit conversions of any kind. A 24-hour clock gives me anxiety.
And it's embarrassing.
The signs were always there
I remember frustrating mathematics teachers who always wanted me to "show the working". I’d write out the steps one by one, but something would always happen at the equals sign. It’s like a switch flipped: the steps were correct, but the final answer was wrong.
It showed up again while I worked on a TV production as a script supervisor/continuity. I had to fill out a sheet that matched the scenes to their audio track numbers. But the sound recordist always raised her eyebrows at me when I checked to confirm the file number. Somehow track 109 jumped to 120 on my list. Another switch would flip: with triple-digit numbers, the xx9 never went to x10. It went wherever it wished.
Dyscalculia in my everyday life
Disclaimer: this is a stressful topic. There's a lot of shame about being bad with numbers. Here are my frustrations and coping strategies.
- The best feature on a phone isn’t the camera
Smartphones often differentiate themselves by resolution and lenses. But when I look at a phone, I check the calculator. I honestly don’t know how I’d survive adulthood without it. I can do calculations and make conversions on the go and it won’t look weird. Everyone has a phone in their hands anyway; it’s not like I’ve whipped out a Casio scientific calculator from my purse. I can’t imagine living in the age of the abacus…
2. Don’t ask me where I’ll be in five years
I dread that question, and I’m grateful I no longer go for interviews or send out CVs as much. If you ask me to think of the next five years, those are too many days too far ahead. I struggle to think of anything past a week or two. Don’t ask me the date either. Maybe I’d organize my life better if the calendar wasn’t a bunch of numbers.
3. I dislike phone numbers
It took me long enough to master my ID number. Shouldn’t that be enough? But no, I have to memorize my phone number too, all 10 digits of it. I’ve never memorized more than four phone numbers at a time in my entire life. That said, I’ve often needed a mental health break from everyone (translation: I’ve crashed and burned a lot), and a new number is the quickest way to disappear. But it takes several months to remember the new one, and I’ll recite it badly, like not in doubles or triples, but in some weird rhythm that confuses people.
4. Money is difficult
When I ran a small business, my prices were always 10s and 20s, and I tracked each transaction on an Excel spreadsheet. I travel with exact change as much as possible, although I haven’t fully embraced the cashless option which might be easier for public transport. I always overbudget when I do my grocery runs every weekend–better to allocate more money than less. But at the same time, I walk through the aisles with my calculator app in hand in case my overbudgeting was wrong. I’d hate to be embarrassed at the checkout counter.
5. Rent day is annoying
My current landlord prefers rent by the 30th of every month, but I’d rather pay it by the 5th. Paying at the end of the month constantly confuses me, like which month am I paying for? Am I paying for the one that’s ending or the one that’s starting? It’s an irritating limbo just because the number is 30, not 5. Yes, I know it’s still four weeks, but it still irks me.
I could go on…
…but that's enough shame for one blog post. Part of me knows that if I didn't have dyscalculia, I'd have been a scientist of some sort, maybe an engineer or physicist. Unfortunately, I'm utterly hopeless at all things formulas and numbers and tables.
So, if you see me typing on my phone, I'm not texting anyone, I'm counting. I'm thankful for any tools I can use, but I still hope someday I'll avoid mental mathematics for good. I'm off to dream about a brain chip that could make me an instant math genius. Don't wake me up.
