I have always spelt Math, H-A-T-E. Let's face it - Mathematics is a subject that arouses extreme feelings in the bosom of a student. Either you hate it or you love it. Either you are good at it or you feel lost at the mention of it. I belong to the latter group.
My earliest memories of the subject are of me struggling to count on fingers while the figure of my class teacher at the Abu Dhabi Indian School loomed above. I remember that Cokie Roberts once said, "As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school." How well do I know that thought!
My dad is one of those men with high morals who believe that children have to work hard on their own, without resolving to be spoon fed, in the form of tuitions. But he met his waterloo when I reached the 10th grade. It hit him like a tonne of bricks that if he did not send me for tuitions, my "count on the finger-ponder-count again-ponder" technique would make my math scoring sheet look like a bloodstained rag.
The battle was not a solo one. Somehow, most of the students of my 10th grade class were known dunces in Math. All of us ended up running off for tuitions to different teachers that year. A teacher who was a rank holder in Mathematics taught us, but none of us ever caught up. Maybe it was our natural stupidity or her habit of getting hold of all our free hours and substituting it with Mathematics lessons that did it. The more she struggled, the more we muddled up. In fact, during a recent school re-union, it was a joke among our spouses that none of the students from our batch could even work basic sums well. Sheesh.
First came our battle with algebra, then geometry and trigonometry. Trigonometry was fun because sin theta and cos theta sounded different. My interest in statistics soared during those days because I enjoyed tallying those figures and crossing them off. But integration and differentiation send chills down my spine even today. I persisted because I had this dream of becoming a pilot (a real dream) after getting a degree in aeronautical engineering (not really a dream, but a necessity). Oh yes, I endured endless teasing from family and friends about me making calculations on my fingers while the plane came crashing down. I ignored all that and continued fighting.
By Linda George, Deputy Web Editor