I remember a time when math was fun. Numbers fluidly came together in my head to create answers with ease. Word problems were fun and simple. I am talking, of course, about the days of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Geometry and trigonometry were slightly harder, but I would still classify them as part of the easier days.
Algebra and calculus, however, were both a struggle for me. The time I spent in high school and college fighting to understand turned me against math to this day. Now when I hear the word math, I start to sweat, my heart beats faster, and I loudly complain about any attempt to make me do math.
When I realized I moan and groan at the word math the other day I was amazed. I have considered myself a scholar for most of my life, shame on me for giving up on a whole subject! There is no reason that a student who honestly and wholeheartedly tries to succeed at math cannot succeed.
From this day forward, I put down my foot on my irrational fear of math and take steps to excel at math. All I need to do is put in the time and pretend I love math like Sheldon Cooper.
At UC Davis the average math class is four units. I have heard that for every unit you are supposed to spend three hours out of class studying per week. That means that I need to study math twelve hours a week: either 2.4 hours for 5 days or 1.7 hours per day over 7 days. I will also rewrite my notes like I do for my other classes. Despite my deep fear of math teachers and tutors I also plan to actually attend office hours or the Student Academic Success Center. I know that they don’t intend to make me feel unwelcome, but I always feel stupid around them because they get this material. I realize that their understanding of the material is kind of the point of me talking to them, but like I said, my math fears are irrational.
My fear of math made me think about the history of females and math. As we all know, females have been discouraged for most of written history from learning, let alone to do anything math-related. In awesome movies, such as Hidden Figures, we can learn about contributions that women have made to science with their math skills, but these geniuses have been forgotten or swept aside by males.
In the twenty-first century, there is a great push for women to join STEM fields. I remember my teachers were happy to see me excel in math because they wanted me to study math further. I could see in their eyes, “See it isn’t so hard, go break that glass ceiling and be a scientist.” The truth is that numbers do not excite me anymore, now I like reading and writing.
I greatly admire all plans to encourage females to join STEM fields. I know, though, that there is a long road ahead to gender equality in STEM fields. Preconceptions about science and gender need to be altered. Biology, I have noticed, is considered a “female” science because it is about cuddly animals. On the opposite end of the spectrum, engineering, physics, and chemistry are “male” sciences.
In lower division science classes there are almost equal amounts of male and female students as all majors have basic general education requirements to fill. However, in upper division classes for engineering and physics, there is a sharp gender divide. Some of my engineering friends told me that the guys in their classes will not work with them, so the five females all have to work together. I hope someday the idea of discouraging females from STEM will seem totally ridiculous, like when we laugh at the idea that women could not use their brains at all. Let’s keep pushing for progress and the equality of women.