I totally kicked ass at every math class I took. Which was a bunch of classes beyond third semester calc.

The Cthulhu Circus

[link]

(Family Circus meets Lovecraft)

Huh. So it sounds like I was freaking lucky to get out of Chicago last night. It's all windy and overcast and spitty outside.

I was fine in math until I had a theory class. Give me a practical problem and I could figure it out (until thermo) but theory? Brain don't do that. It's kind of odd.

I need to call my brother. Kind of dreading this. OTOH, I can't talk much still (voice got worse- sure it was all the plane air) so I'll just be a good listener.

I liked the problem-solving aspect of algebra; that was very satisfying. But once you get to conceptual math like calculus, I was pretty lost. Bob and I have an ongoing joke about my calculation kryptonite-- I'm probably not as much proud as amused and completely unembarassed by it.

I can't do math but I'm suitably embarrassed and traumatized...would that make him feel better? But I think I know what he means: that attitude that's like 'Eh, foreign films..." Or "Poetry...who can follow all that symbolism stuff?" Not that the same people are all always saying all these things, but those are things I've heard people be sort of "proud-ignorant" about.

I was great in math until I took geometry from the hockey coach. I had 102% in freshman algebra. I read somewhere that it's common for girls to do well in math until that point, but the geometry teacher was truly amazingly awful, so I tend to blame him.

If erika can't do math either then I'm blaming PV and AHS.

Makes more sense than Canada.

I liked the problem-solving aspect of algebra; that was very satisfying. But once you get to conceptual math like calculus, I was pretty lost.

Yeah, me too. I love solving puzzles, and I was always good at math (I was even on the math team in middle school!). But I think once it got to the point where I needed a calculator to figure something out for me (sine, cosine, pi to the brazilianth decimal), I lost interest.

I am excessively proud to find that I have something in common with ita's mother, being all per-crappity at the fancy maths but very good with arithmetic. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, decimals -- I have a weird love of playing with them all: it's like having a boxful of cute puppies doing cute puppy tricks. In certain moods, the magical multiply/add-the-digits/collapse tricks 3's, 6's and 9's perform on command seem cuter to me than babies.

Given which, I really should be able to balance my checkbook a fuck of a lot better, though that's really a laziness problem, not arithmetic.

Anyhow, I have something in common with ita's mom, and it's not about lab animals, and this makes me happy.

ICompletelyON, someone please tell me to stay away from the letters section of Salon.com. That's some seriously fucked-up craxyland, there (annoyingly, complete with equal doses of craxy from both the right and the left), and I need to not look at it. I love Salon and want to keep enjoying it and it's creeping me out that I share reading material with these people.