I really look forward to the day when I can get through my math homework without crying.  This is a possibility, right?  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but the tears make it difficult to see decimals, and wouldn't you know it, that's the module I happen to be on right now.  My homework is riddled with them. Oddly enough, if I'm going to be honest about this, the math is pretty easy.  I did, after all, take this pre algebra class some 35 plus years ago.  Officially, I don't need to take it again, but when I did a math placement test, it shows I don't remember much of it (I could have told them that!).  But so far, as I am relearning it, it seems to be coming back to me - dredges from a very distant part of my brain.  I keep confusing the online (oh yea, it's ALL on line) math system called ALEKS.  I guess I'm breezing through it fast enough so it keeps wanting to reassess me to make sure I'm on the correct module.  But when I take the ...

I have the great good fortune to have not one, but two wise and wonderful sisters.  Not only do they support me in deep and meaningful ways, they both have a habit of saying things that jolt me to my toes.  I am most grateful and blessed.  Below is the response from one of them to my last post entitled, "What is a digit?".  She too went back to school as an adult and received her bachelors degree a few years ago.  Can you say, "excellent role model"?  Susan, Ha! all the way through reading this, I was going to write you and tell you to just look it up and that math has its own language, but you figured it out on your own. I have no idea why they have to have a new word (and sometimes two or three words) to explain something that we know in plain English, but once you get the secret code, it’s easier to get in the clubhouse. Don’t let their pompous smoke screens bluff you out of this. AND as you keep going, you brain w...

I'm sitting here struggling with my first math assignment from my first math class today.  Mind you, it's on whole numbers.  I decided if I'm going to blog, I'm going to be transparent and tell it like it is.  The sentence, "Mind you, it's on whole numbers." is one of the more degrading things I have put out there for public consumption.  But I'm going to go ahead and scrape the bottom of the barrel of humiliations.  No use holding back.  Secrets are the cancer of the soul.  Even pitiful ones like, "I don't know whole numbers". Besides, I have bigger fish to fry then fretting about my worries about looking stupid.  And if I can get this embarrassment out of the way, then I can deal with them.  Like for instance how, at this moment, my heart is racing, my peripheral vision is non existent, and I feel a panic cresting over my head like a wave.  I thought I could handle this math thing, but I'm not so sure now.  I am having ...

In honor of my first day of math class today (the last one being about 40 years ago!), I'm reposting this ominous ditty.   Note:  Picture circa date before paint job. Temple of Bloom Well, there it is.  The Temple of Doom.  Some call it the Mathematics building, but I know better.  Aside from having dyslexia, this is the biggest reason I have not previously returned to college.  Math was the center of all my hellish memories of school.  If those squirly numbers would just sit still and give a girl a fighting chance.  But I am a firm believer that we create our own reality.  Think of the book, "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne (but with more depth and complexity).  And also the book, "Super Brain" by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi.  From this moment on, all of this "math equals trauma" shit is a thing of the past.  I mean it.  From now on, every time I pass this building, I smile and send out the thought that...