Post #6: A Response to “Reframing My Intellectual Report Card”

While reading Sophie’s archive “Reframing my Intellectual Report Card,” I resonated with many of her concerns and complaints about math. Although I have not been diagnosed with dyscalculia or any sort of math related learning disability, math-based classes have always been a struggle for me. I find myself able to understand concepts in class, but when it comes to executing those concepts in practice problems alone, it looks like a foreign language.
Like many high school students, I based my self worth off of my academic ability and achievements from ages 14–18. In middle school, I had never struggled with school. I was actually placed in the “advanced” program in elementary school, and continued with this track all the way through eighth grade. I excelled in reading, loved writing, was fascinated by science, and found math straightforward and easy. However all that changed once I got to Algebra II in my sophomore year.
All of a sudden math wasn’t a simple task for me to do mindlessly, it required intense concentration and focus. I would spend hours on homework, just to receive C’s, and occasionally the low B. I would take tests through tears, knowing I studied the information but unable to actually execute the problems correctly, receiving more C’s. Although these scores are not terrible, they felt like the end of the world to me. After basing your self worth off of A’s for years, to get a C in a class that is deemed so important by academia feels as though you are worthless and stupid.
In the following years of high school, I was always in math tutoring. I went to the math tutor center once, maybe even twice, every week to review concepts and complete practice problems. However these tutoring sessions made little difference. Pre-Calculus in junior year felt like looking at random symbols and letters, with no idea what to do first. I would get the hang of one concept, but quickly forget it as soon as we moved onto the next. By the time I reached Calculus in senior year, I begged my parents to hire a tutor to come to my house once every week for help. I was so tired of feeling awful about math, and I just wanted to succeed to prove to myself that I was worth something and smart.
This tutor truly saw me at my worst, with weekly breakdowns over concepts that seemed to come easy to everyone else in my class. Through tears, we would review concepts for hours, all resulting in B’s on tests. Again, these are not bad grades, but I had been so conditioned to think that anything less than an A was unacceptable, so I felt miserable about my ability and worth as a student.
Although my time in math classes during high school was plagued with tutors, tears, and a depressive spiral about my worth, now that I am in college I am able to step back and realize how trivial mathematical academic ability really is. Yes, math is important. But anything past basic algebra or geometry is not needed for everyday life, or my chosen major. I look back and laugh at how obsessed I was with math and being perfect. I focused so much on my weakest subjects, but did not give myself credit for performing above and beyond in my AP English classes, my Chinese classes, or even my history classes for all four years of high school. I let my self esteem get knocked down over and over by a bunch of numbers and equations, and was too narrow minded to see the full picture.
Now that I am in college and fairly removed from the complicated world of math, I am so much more confident in my ability as a student. I have realized that my worth and importance as a human is not defined by a grade in an arbitrary class, but by my effort and passion put into activities inside and outside of the classroom. Grades are important, but not everything, and realizing this has allowed me to adapt a much healthier mindset regarding academics. I can take corrections without feeling like they are direct hits at my being. I am no longer controlled by my grades, and am able to brush a bad grade off with the mindset to try again next time.