3. The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'

The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'

Stacking is important. I'm relatively good at math myself, but an absence in elementary school meant I wasn't there on the day long division was taught. When I asked the teacher about it, I got about a couple minute lesson as he sat in his chair and scribbled down stuff quickly. Unsurprisingly, the impromptu lesson didn't stick.

I don't remember exactly how the conversation transpired, but I remember when I brought up my inability to do it again, there was a feeling of beratement, something along the lines of "I already taught you this". So using my natural math skills I just did it all in my head or worked out the division in a cruder, unorganized form (as compared to the proper way to do long division).

I've taught myself the format before but it's never stuck to memory. I already got along fine without it so there was no drive to commit it. If I need to divide 243 by 17 or something then I can just think in my head "17 x 10 is 170, so you have 73 left over, 17 x 4 is 68, 170+68= 238, no more 17s go into it, 10 and 4 means the answer is 14 with 5 left over." Obviously something more involved might take some scribbling on a piece of paper. The only time this let me down was in high school when I needed to divide polynomials that had variables in them using the long division format. I usually just took the hit on tests or reverse engineered the answer and scribbled out a convoluted mess as my "work" so that I wouldn't get dinged for not showing it. I didn't want to talk to the teacher about my inability to do a skill I was supposed to have learned in elementary school in a Dual Enrollment class I was getting an A in already.

Putting story time aside, point is it's easy for you to get holes in your knowledge. And I had a pretty good educational upbringing all things considered. Pride, embarrassment and frustration can prevent kids from learning what they need to learn, and the way the system works means it's easy for them to keep skating along until one day they're high school or college graduates that are "bad at math" who struggle to do a 10-20% tip in their head, even an approximation.

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