Do you think you’re bad in math?  If you’re reading this page, I’ll bet you do.  It’s also a good bet that it was someone else who told you so.

If you can think of one thing, one incident, one terrible haunting memory that has made you think you stink at this stuff, take out a piece of paper and write it down.  (I'll wait.)

So, you think you’re bad in math?  Well, guess what?  You’re wrong!  DEAD WRONG!  And, if someone told you that, they were wrong!

You’re NOT bad in math -- You just haven’t done well in math in the past.  It’s doesn’t mean you can’t do it.  It doesn’t mean that you aren’t good at it! 

Grab that piece of paper again and write this down… Go on!  I’ll wait: 

It’s not that I’m bad in math, it’s just that I’ve had bad experiences with math!

You’re in good company of people who’ve been told that they stink at stuff.  Check out this list:

• Albert Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.

• As a boy Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was too stupid to learn anything.

• Werner von Braun, one of our most important rocket scientists from 1930 to 1970, flunked ninth-grade algebra.  (Do you KNOW how much algebra you need to know to do rocket science?  Dang!)

• Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.

• Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college.

• Louis Pasteur was rated mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.  He went on to discover that “germs” cause disease prompting hospitals to start sanitizing things.  He also invented milk pasteurization and cured rabies.  (Yeah, he was mediocre, alright.  Lazy too.  He only changed the world.)

• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he had "no good ideas."  (Yeah, Disneyland and animated cartoons were really bad ideas.)

I can hardly put myself on the same list as the people above...  But, I HAVE created one of the world's most popular math websites...  And, yeah, I thought I was bad in math too.  So I know exactly how you feel.  Now I’m one of most famous math geeks on the planet.  Now, THERE'S something to BRAG about! 

Here’s my story:

My only memory of math in elementary school is listening to a tape of a man saying, “Three times four is….  Four times four is…  Five times four is… “  It was one of those drills where you had to write down the answers before he asked the next one.  It just occurred to me…  Why couldn’t my teacher have asked us these questions?  Why on earth did they need a tape for this?!  Anyway, that’s all I remember.

But, seventh grade – boy, do I remember seventh grade!  Much to my chagrin, they stuck me in one of those “gifted” programs.  You know the ones – where you have to do twice as much work as the other kids and get lower grades as a reward.  This never did make sense to me.  So, I was in “7X Math.”  I guess the “X” was put in there as some sort of sick algebra joke.  It was a cruel irony to say the least.  I remember this class very well and I remember being completely clueless the entire time.  I also remember how it felt to have “F” exams passed back to me and seeing that everyone around me seemed to be getting A’s and B’s.  How could these students understand all the hieroglyphics and cave drawings the teacher kept throwing up on the board?  And I remember the teacher… Oh, I remember him.  Mr. Ubbernerd.  Unfortunately, our class was right after lunch.  He always managed to have at least half a pound of white Weber’s bread left in his front teeth.  And there was this little blob of spit…  As he talked, it would string from the middle of his upper lip to his lower…  up… down… up… down.  It was mesmerizing.  Perhaps this is why I failed the class – spit blob obsession.

My next math teacher (I think it was the second half of seventh grade) was nice.  I don’t remember learning any math, particularly, but I do remember that it wasn’t safe to sit in the front because he sprayed spit when he talked.  (Do you see a “too much saliva” theme going on here too?)

Now, on to eight grade – Prealgebra.   I had math the last period and there was a kid named David in our class.   I’m sure you had a kid like David in your grade.  He was the kid that always orchestrated the dropping of books at exactly 2:15, the kid who knew how to convert a Bic pen into a pellet shooter, the kid who always had enough spit for 18 spit wads (all to be aimed at the classroom clock).  That kid.  My teacher hated that kid and the rest of the class along with him.  So, between David and what seemed to be a chronic case of PMS on my teacher's part, I didn’t learn any math that year.

Ninth grade – Prealgebra yet again.  This year went pretty well.  I had a good teacher and I remember that I got some good grades.  Things were looking up for me – mathematically speaking.

Then came tenth grade – Algebra 1.  The teacher told us that we could either pay attention or sleep, just as long as we didn’t talk.  So, I slept.  Hey, it was right before lunch and my blood sugar was dropping.  I didn’t do any homework yet somehow miraculously managed to squeak out C-'s on my tests – just barely enough.  That was fine with me after what I’d been through.   I just wanted to get the heck out of there!

I spent the next several years successfully avoiding math at all costs.  At one point, I thought about majoring in Chemistry.  I had a fantastic chemistry teacher and you could mix wildly colored things and make them smoke.  So, I sent away for information from my two local state colleges…  Ouch!  They both said that I’d have to take two years of Calculus.  TWO YEARS OF CALCULUS!!  I figured that I’d never be able to do that and dropped the idea.  (I now TEACH Calculus.)

Then it happened.  In the fall of 1985, I was forced (at gunpoint – I swear) by my college to take a math class.  It was Intermediate Algebra.  I had to eat three Rolaids just so I could look at the schedule to pick a class time.  Over the years, I had grown to view math in the same way as things like cooties and the Ebola virus – avoidance at all cost!  But, I wanted to go to college… and I hadn’t taken enough math in high school (Ebola virus)… So, I was stuck.

After two packs of Rolaids and some Imodium-AD, I finally picked the class – late morning, so I could sleep in, of course.  I was a serious student!

I still remember that first class… I didn’t know whether I was going to throw-up, pass out or start crying.  The teacher kept saying, “… and you remember THIS from last semester…”  Last semester… Last semester?  I didn’t take any math last semester!  Oh… my… GOSH!  I was supposed to take MATH last semester?

I leaned over and whispered to the student next to me, “Last semester?  Do you know what he’s doing?”  She quickly shook her head, “No.”  She had the same horrified look on her face as I did.

That teacher was in rare form – all hopped up on coffee and donuts and covered from head to toe with chalk dust…  “And you remember this type of linear blah-blah whose graph is clearly blah blah blah…”  “Clearly.”  Uh… Yeah.  Good thing I had the Rolaids with me.  This guy was a major grouch who obviously had some sort of deficient childhood.  Yes, he had scared the living crud out of me.

After class, the other clueless student and I cautiously approached the teacher – much like one would approach a live grenade or a baby that was accidentally fed chili.  We got up our nerve and told him that neither of us had taken any math the previous semester and that we didn’t recognize anything he had just done on the chalkboard.  He gruffly told us that we’d never be able to pass his class and that we should take an easier one.  He wasn’t exactly kind about it.  I think his exact response was, “You’re going to fail this class.  Get out!”

Boy, were we mad!  We got out in the hallway and agreed that he wasn’t going to chase us off with that routine!  We were going to show HIM!  The nerve of that guy!  Luckily, we decided to NOT try to run him over in the parking lot.  Hey, things like that have consequences! 

We studied and studied...  And we both got A's on the first test!  To this day, I'll never forget having that "93" paper handed back to me.  I can still picture it.

So, after a LOT of hard work, I ended up getting a B in that class.  (I would have gotten an A, but after ripping a 93% on the first test, I got cocky and didn’t study for the second one… I ate a big D that day and learned a big lesson!)

But, do you really know what I learned that semester?  Math wasn’t so bad after all.  In fact, it was pretty fun!   I guess I had really never given it a chance.  Heck, who would have guessed that I could be really good at it?

By the way, that grumpy professor turned out to be a really nice guy who gave me a lot of extra help.  He even talked me into becoming a college math teacher.  And that other initially clueless student turned out to be the best study-buddy anyone could ask for.  She got an A that semester and is now a high school math teacher.

It just goes to show you… You never know where you’ll end up.  ANYTHING can happen.  You might even end up LIKING math!