10-02-2012, 08:03 AM
I taught myself basic multiplication and division with flashcards when I was 6, I found it a fun puzzle game. I didn't need school (I also taught myself to read when I was 5 though I'm not certain how).
But when I was 13 I got locked away for months and missed a lot of school. I'm not sure how or why but after I got out I was sent to Granny and I was promoted to the next grade anyway, and though I did fine in most classes I found myself failing math horribly. No matter what I just couldn't get it and I started to think I was going to fail the semester and then the year. It was a strange experience because normally I'd finish before everyone else and read & write but I couldn't do that in math. In desperation I started from the beginning of the textbook and followed the example. And to my surprise I found it easy. I continued, page after page, and I quickly took to picking it up. Like with the flashcards it became fun as I figured it out. And that's when I had my revelation:
to learn math I had to ignore the teacher and follow the book.
I went from making Fs to As in like a week. I tuned her out when she explained it and simply focused on the book and then I started jumping ahead of the class. And then with the semester exam (I think less than a month after it started clicking for me) I was the only one to make a score of a 110 because I not only got it all right but I was also the only one to get the bonus question right (and she told me that not only was I the only one to get it right but that college students sometimes messed up on it, I'd figured it out on my own). Right after she had me tutoring the others not getting it and I told them ignore the teacher, follow the book (the double standard still annoys me to this day that when we fail it's OUR fault, but when we succeed then THANK A TEACHER).
Then (over a year later) I missed the end of my high school freshman year and the beginning of the next (as I ran away from home) and when I came back the school put me through a bunch of tests to figure out what to do with me. I figured I was average and as I seemed to get along best with those in "resource" (between normal and special ed) I tried to do worse than I could. Basically I did the IQ and academic testing as long as it was easy and then I just started checking randomly (disclaimer: it was all multiple choice so it's possible I just made very lucky choices, you know, the kinda luck a major lotto winner gets), even getting a few wrong on purpose (I was careful as I didn't want to get put all the way down into special ed). Despite this the results came back that I was a borderline genius who was where I was "supposed to be" for math and college level for everything else. I don't know who was more shocked, me or the counselor who gave me the tests.
And I used to be a lot better than I am now about doing math in my head and doing it so fast that I could figure the tax and have the exact change (if I had it) ready before the clerk gave me the final total (I, too, got lazy and started using calculators and my ability has diminished).
Years later I had a girlfriend who LOVED higher mathematics (she made me think of it as actual mental masturbation that gave mental Big Os) and she believed that if there was a God/dess that It would be found in math. She made it seem like such fun that I thought about taking classes myself. But her enthusiasm did die down after a few years.
But when I was 13 I got locked away for months and missed a lot of school. I'm not sure how or why but after I got out I was sent to Granny and I was promoted to the next grade anyway, and though I did fine in most classes I found myself failing math horribly. No matter what I just couldn't get it and I started to think I was going to fail the semester and then the year. It was a strange experience because normally I'd finish before everyone else and read & write but I couldn't do that in math. In desperation I started from the beginning of the textbook and followed the example. And to my surprise I found it easy. I continued, page after page, and I quickly took to picking it up. Like with the flashcards it became fun as I figured it out. And that's when I had my revelation:
to learn math I had to ignore the teacher and follow the book.
I went from making Fs to As in like a week. I tuned her out when she explained it and simply focused on the book and then I started jumping ahead of the class. And then with the semester exam (I think less than a month after it started clicking for me) I was the only one to make a score of a 110 because I not only got it all right but I was also the only one to get the bonus question right (and she told me that not only was I the only one to get it right but that college students sometimes messed up on it, I'd figured it out on my own). Right after she had me tutoring the others not getting it and I told them ignore the teacher, follow the book (the double standard still annoys me to this day that when we fail it's OUR fault, but when we succeed then THANK A TEACHER).
Then (over a year later) I missed the end of my high school freshman year and the beginning of the next (as I ran away from home) and when I came back the school put me through a bunch of tests to figure out what to do with me. I figured I was average and as I seemed to get along best with those in "resource" (between normal and special ed) I tried to do worse than I could. Basically I did the IQ and academic testing as long as it was easy and then I just started checking randomly (disclaimer: it was all multiple choice so it's possible I just made very lucky choices, you know, the kinda luck a major lotto winner gets), even getting a few wrong on purpose (I was careful as I didn't want to get put all the way down into special ed). Despite this the results came back that I was a borderline genius who was where I was "supposed to be" for math and college level for everything else. I don't know who was more shocked, me or the counselor who gave me the tests.
And I used to be a lot better than I am now about doing math in my head and doing it so fast that I could figure the tax and have the exact change (if I had it) ready before the clerk gave me the final total (I, too, got lazy and started using calculators and my ability has diminished).
Years later I had a girlfriend who LOVED higher mathematics (she made me think of it as actual mental masturbation that gave mental Big Os) and she believed that if there was a God/dess that It would be found in math. She made it seem like such fun that I thought about taking classes myself. But her enthusiasm did die down after a few years.
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