I’ve always hated math. But will it always be that way?

Last week in lecture, my algebra professor asked all of us students to raise our hands if we liked math. A handful of us did. Then he asked us to raise our hands if we didn’t like math. A larger group raised their hands. But I didn’t raise my hand in response to either question. 

It stayed suspended in the air, ratcheting upwards and downwards occasionally in confusion. I giggled in that mad kind of way I always do when I’m unsure how to proceed in a social situation. What would be the honest way to respond? Almost certainly, it would be raising my hand with the “I don’t like math” cohort. Why did I hesitate then? Why didn’t I raise my hand? I asked myself these questions over and over again the following afternoon.

In grade 1, my elementary school recommended that I have a psychological assessment done, which included a lot of blocks, cards and puzzles. While I don’t recall this moment, during one of these tests I slammed a puzzle down angrily and shouted, “It’s impossible!” I did not finish the test. 

I chuckled when I read that part of the assessment’s report because that moment seemed so foreign, so distant from me. But the more I thought of that moment, the more I realized I have lived my entire life with that attitude. That moment was a distillation of a timeless impulse that continues to live inside me. It was not distant at all, but intimately close. Like a kiss. Breathing down my neck. Drawing breath from my own mouth. 

When I face failure with something over and over and over and over and over again, I eventually give up. The rejection and failure begin to feel like a ritual punishment, a confirmation that I am worthless and undeserving. My pride does not allow me to accept that.

In grade 9, I had my first math tutor. She was an elderly woman named Linda who was the go-to for all families who sent their kids to my high school. She lived in a house downhill from the school. Worms would coat her driveway when it rained. Then, two years later, came the next tutor: Jack, my mother’s friend’s father. He owned and operated a small airport and lost two fingers in a farming accident.  Lunchtime meetings with both tutors went by, and it became clear that what needed to be sticking simply was not.

I vividly remember the particular, trademarked horror I would feel before math exams. That feeling is so wonderfully, terribly unique that it feels like there are fingerprints all over me. Handprints and bruises from the fear and shame, which only compounded as I grew older. The stakes were raised incrementally, and the weight of this felt like more stones being added to the press, more weight. It was a time of the gnashing of teeth. 

There are few feelings more frustrating than investing the entirety of your being into something and walking away with no results. It is a blight and pestilence of your own soul. The crop dies, and there is nothing you can do, even though you watered it and gave it soil. Even though you so desperately wanted it to thrive. You feel ashamed. You feel angry. 

You are too afraid and too angry and too young and too strong and too weak and too special and too ordinary to admit that the one you are truly angry with is yourself. 

Once, before my very last high school math exam, I stared at a practice sheet blankly. I didn’t move. I didn’t reach for my pencil. I just stared. I looked for so long, hoping that eventually my patience and refusal to act would end this moment I was living in. It didn’t.

My field of study and passion is paleontology. In science, something either is or is not. It can’t be both. A specimen belongs to one species, not two or three or 57 all at once. Something is a certain age. It is not no-age-at-all or as old as the entire universe or all ages at once. Things are classified and fit neatly together. They are real. You can see them in front of you. 

When I describe aspects of my studies to others, they find it all terribly complicated and complex. But to me it is so fundamentally simple, as real and present as my own hands. I can pick up a fossil tooth, twirl it in my hand or run my finger down its serrated ridge. I can imagine it drawing blood. I can look at a fossil leaf and imagine it green and lush, etched with vessels pumping chlorophyll, growing from a branch and swaying in a gentle tree-top breeze. I can look at a fossil trail in sandstone and imagine the animal that made it thrashing and slithering itself forward.

In math, nothing is real. Nothing is simple. Nothing is merely what it is. Everything is imaginary and theoretical—governed by rules that are simultaneously fundamentally intangible, fantastical and without mercy or flexibility. Everything is untethered from observable reality. The line is cut, and it floats upwards into imagination like a lost balloon. 

It is like a language. I see people speaking it fluently every day. Yet I open my mouth and only unintelligible gibberish comes out. In those moments, it seems ridiculous to try. Yet I have no option but to try. Algebra and other math courses are required elements of my degree. So, in effect, I am in a predicament that is both forced on me without my approval and entirely of my own making. That’s life, I guess.

I have a new tutor now: Jason. He’s a math student at USask. We meet in one of the former dorm rooms in the mathematics building across from Place Riel, which looks like an old dormitory because that’s what it used to be. Each office is a little cubicle where young students once lived. Now, one of them is the scene of my weekly battle with algebra. 

Oftentimes, I’ll get confused. Sometimes, while Jason is attempting to explain a new intangible and fantastical rule, I’ll cry out in exasperation, “But why?” Once, Jason responded: “Why not!” At that moment, I suddenly understood something; I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Now I think I know.

September has gone by in a flash. It feels like no time has passed. However, I feel that something profound is different. I’m still confused. I’m still learning. I’m still no one’s definition of a natural talent in math. But I’m getting there. 

I blurt out the wrong answer, but I shout it loudly and confidently. I go back and trace my steps. I ask questions. And, eventually, I understand my mistake and how to correctly solve the question. I get it, and everything is right again. I get it, and anything is possible.

I have already learned many things from algebra. It is hard and easy, impossible and effortless, terrible and beautiful. When I end an equation or finally understand the latest theorem, it feels as though a monumental journey has closed and ended. And then the loop opens again. Time for another round. Would I be here, doing this, if it were not required? No. Am I likely to truly, practically use any of this information in my career? No. Am I glad I’m here? No. But yes.

That is what I thought of when my algebra professor asked that question. When I hear “Do you like math or not?” an answer asserts itself loudly. It yells and screams, “No!” But there is another answer. A quiet one that sits further back, but it is just as true. So, for now, that is the answer I am more interested in. That is the answer I want to listen to. That is the answer I want to focus on.

Do I like math? Yes.

If this kind of change is possible, then anything is possible. I can be anything, say anything, do anything. I wonder what other impossible things I’ll say or do tomorrow. I wonder what other impossible things I’ll be.