Am I actually any good at math?

Short answer: No.

The long answer.... Well, it's long....

I've always told people that math is my worst subject. When I was 16, enrolled in college, studying Calc 3 before I'd even graduated high school, many probably didn't believe me. It's understandably difficult to believe because throughout my education, I regularly scored better in math than many of my peers. I also scored better in math than my own scores in other subjects. Outwardly, it would seem that math was my strength, and thus made sense that I not only enjoyed it, but intended to pursue it.

Depending on how you count, I'm now at attempt 4th or 5th at an undergrad degree. Yes, undergrad. This is technically my 4th university that I've attended in order to study math specifically, (at one of those schools I earned an AA in Arabic). If you've read my other posts, then you know that this attempt comes after a 5-6 year gap where I had plenty of time to consider whether a math degree was really for me, and why I thought so. This includes the consideration of whether I'm even any good at math. Which of course, I've always said, no, I'm not.

So perhaps you think I'm just being modest or self-deprecating. Or worse, perhaps you think I just have unreasonably high expectations of myself and thus could not possibly be good enough to consider myself "good at math." However, I'm neither humble nor unrealistic. In fact, being back in school again has reminded me fully of why math is not only my worst subject, but my favorite.

Indeed math is my favorite subject because it's my worst subject. I seem good at it because I like it. Not the other way around.

Of course you could argue that I'm "good" at math because I picked it up faster than others, but that isn't really a fair scale. I'm a fast learner, that's just a fact. Math however offered an inexhaustible supply of problems that never ceased to challenge me. While I could potentially memorize every word of my English books, every date in my history books, I simply could not memorize every equation. What's more, when I felt totally confident with some new operation, there were always immediate problems as soon as I considered various other possibilities. It was exciting because I could use the simple concepts I may have learned in class (and possibly already be bored with) and apply them to anything I could think of. The only restriction was my own creativity and ability.

Moreover, the lack of subjectivity made even advanced math topics entirely approachable. Right was right, wrong was wrong. There was no judgement when you made a mistake, only a correct answer, waiting to be explained. It was an amazing thing for someone who could BS in other classes to find a subject void of BS.

But what's interesting to note is that compared to my abilities in other subjects, math is certainly my worst. When I learned Arabic it was amazing how I seemed to simply retain the language as I learned it, almost passively. All that was required was practice. Similarly with music. I taught myself piano and guitar and became proficient in weeks vs months. I could read fast, retain words and concepts and adapt muscle memory with a fair amount of ease... However, even now, ask me to subtract two numbers and the odds are only slightly in my favor that I'll get it right. Give me a 7 digit phone number once, and at best I'll remember 3-4 digits. Numbers just aren't my thing.

But I loved math so much, and loved the challenge of it, that it was the only subject I really strove to comprehend and get better at, especially when I was younger. The very fact that I was not "a natural" pushed me to pursue it at the expense of many other talents I didn't know I had, (I didn't learn piano until I was 16, Arabic at 22). Indeed, my lack of well-roundedness was one of the reasons I left college in the first place. However, now that I'm back, the old irony of my love and difficulty with math has been remembered.

Now I see that my drive to study math has indeed shaped my thinking about all subjects, and perhaps has even helped me to learn other things more quickly. I think it is both good and healthy to do things one isn't very good at, then to get better at those thing until you can't tell they were ever bad at them to begin with. Or at least, that is the case with me and math.

Perhaps that was why college was so hard at first. To be bad at math, and actually struggle just to keep up was a new experience. New because "struggling" was new, not because I was suddenly no-good. Previously I had enjoyed the challenge, but suddenly it was less enjoyable. Rather than rising to the challenge, I became overwhelmed. Basically, I gave up. But then I tried again. Then gave up, then tried again, then gave up.... until now.

It makes a huge psychological difference to realize now that in fact, math doesn't come easily to me, and it never has. But it matters that when I was young, that was the reason I loved it. And while I was away from school the past few years, that was why I missed it. It is so easy to believe that what we enjoy is also easy for us, but for someone like me, that's simply not true. What I enjoy is exactly that which is not easy. And it's important to realize it when I'm sitting in class, barely keeping up, then going home and spending hours on homework that other students scribble out in 10 minutes before it's due. Maybe they're naturally good at math. Maybe they don't care. It doesn't matter.

The fact is, I'm bad at math, but I want to do it anyway. It's valuable to me. It's a challenge that teaches me how to think. It teaches me to be careful about negatives, to follow operations, to make sense of things before I do them. Maybe I can eventually work back to the point where the hard work doesn't feel so hard, and where others think I look like a natural, but for now... I'll enjoy my struggling for what it is, feel triumphant when I understand, and struggle some more when I find I don't. Because I'm bad at math... But there's only one way to get better.