1. Math D- “Low test scores, in danger of failing…”
For most of my very young life, I loved school. I enjoyed reading and studying and solving problems because I wanted to learn as much as possible. It wasn’t until the school curriculum and teaching styles changed that the subjects I had loved began to feel like they were turning against me. The one that has done the most lasting damage is Math.
It had never been my strongest subject but I had always been able to get through it with enough hard work, which was how I approached everything up until that point. However, around third grade I began having retention issues for math lessons and homework, meaning that I could listen to and take notes on how to do a problem but literally seconds later that knowledge would be gone from my mind. On top of this issue, I also started exhibiting behaviors indicative of ADD and sensory sensitivity; an inability to sit still and focus for long periods of time, heightened sensory responses to background noise, movement, and light, etc. These issues continued to worsen as I progressed through school and it only made the basic difficulties I’d been having even more intense. However, if I had been spotted at a young age I could have been tested and helped with environmental accommodations, and I would have had a much easier time learning math and developing a healthy relationship with the subject. Unfortunately, I wasn’t perceived as having a learning disorder by any of my teachers, instead, they called me lazy and told me that I had to want to succeed, I needed to try harder. This was a consistent message from teachers throughout middle and high school, and no matter how many times I expressed how desperately I wanted to learn, wanted to fit in, and wanted to be seen as smart I was always written off as a slacker.
To cut a long, painful story short, I was diagnosed with ADD as a child, along with heightened sensory sensitivity, and there is also an extremely high chance that I have the math version of dyslexia, Dyscalculia. I have to say “high chance” because when my mother finally persuaded the school to test me during my senior year they refused to go all the way through with it because even the administrators were convinced the problem was laziness. The real issue is that I am categorized as “twice gifted”, which basically means that my grades were so high in English and English-based subjects that my issues in other subjects were just brushed off. People acted like I couldn’t have a learning disability because I wasn't failing every subject, but a “normal” neurotypical student doesn't get all A’s in English and consistent F’s in Math.
The feelings of insecurity, fear, shame, and embarrassment that I’ve come to associate with math throughout my life still impact me today, but thankfully I’m not encountering Algebra in my everyday life anymore. However, the impact math has had on my relationship with chemistry and history has almost been more harmful because I lost something that I wasn’t even aware I could lose. Both subjects had always been easy to understand for me and losing my connection to them was impossible to accept. It was like math had become a personified enemy that was trying to destroy every last bit of enjoyment I could get from school, and I have had to do a lot of mental work to separate my anger at the way I was treated by the education system from the actual subject itself. While my relationship with math is still rocky it no longer dictates how I feel about myself or what I have to offer the world. Letting go of the anger at math has allowed me to reconnect with the studies I enjoy through ways that are more accessible to me and my learning style, and I am starting to accept and enjoy the workings of my neurodivergent mind instead of constantly wishing to be “normal”.
