Another day has passed, and I’ve used algebra enough times to make me certifiably crazy. I am a lot of things, like talented, beautiful, single, and oh-so-humble, but a math person is something I most definitely am not. And I know I’m not alone in this, or else the calculator industry would’ve filed for bankruptcy long if I were the only one shelling out my parent’s money for a new calculator every other week (did I mention I’m also really forgetful?). Now that I have a job, it’s upsetting to realize I can’t subtract how much of my own money I’m losing because my collection of calculators is invariably missing. When I win the lottery, I’m going to hire a personal account, but I digress. Now where were we? (See, I’m also so poor I can’t even pay attention.)

Math.

The elementary schools know where it’s at. The youngins currently coasting in grades K through 6 really don’t understand how good they’ve got it. Even I can admit that math surrounds us every day, even it’s just reading numbers off of our cellphones and digital watches. Analogs are just for show nowadays, right? (Unless, of course, they really do still work, and the one frozen at 2:12 in my third period class is just a sick cosmic joke – my life in a nutshell.) There’s a beautiful simplicity in the ability to add, subtract, and multiply. And when you’re really slaying the game, even divide. There was no need for Algebra 2 or Calculus because good old fashioned arithmetic could get you through forty-five minutes feeling like the next Albert Einstein. So maybe you weren’t going to stop any world wars, but as long as you could figure out zero divided zero meant you had no friends without asking Siri, it was still a win. (Just not for your social life.)

But then we all got a little older, and suddenly language arts decided to shove its way into the equation (pun shamelessly intended). Who did ‘x’ think it was, making us solve for it all the time? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m no psychiatrist. As far as I’m concerned, ‘x’ should solve its own problems. God help the teacher that wrote “Find x” on a test, because I was circling that sucker and drawing an arrow that said, “It’s right here,” faster than you could spell Regret with a capital radius.

And so a shout-out goes to the nightmare students of math teachers everywhere. I hear it does get better, but if there are logarithms in my grocery bills, we’re going to have much bigger problems than the rising price of eggs. “How do I do my taxes, math people?” “Hush now, and learn how the Pythagorean Theorem makes pretty triangles.”

But after years of taking various levels of math and curiously working my up through the system, (imagine a fish flopping so viciously on a boat deck until it somehow lands back in the water for an accurate image of my career in mathematics,) I’ve realized a few things.

One is that some days I spend way too much time correcting the grammar in the word problems to really care about the numbers. Suddenly the bell is about to ring, and all I’ve done is make sure the subjects agree with the verb. Single subjects make the verb take an ‘s’; that’s sort of like math, isn’t it? Knowing the difference between one, none, and many? My math grade begs to differ…

It’s also important to note the teachers in the math department are all very nice people. My math teachers in particular are gems for putting up with kids like me who have too much to say in the school newspaper but nothing to say in class. They understand that math is not for everyone, and, bless their hearts, they want to help you understand why there’s more alphabet than number in your equation. You really didn’t sleep on through to English, or Spanish, or whatever the formulas start to look like when you go cross-eyed from staring so hard. It’s their promise to you that you will pass.

Midterms are coming up, North Penn, so at the very least, now is the time to start paying attention. Especially for seniors, or anyone else with a math class that will switch the semester, you’re halfway through your career in high school mathematics. It would be a nice gift to your teachers if you could show them that you learned a thing or two. And who knows? Life lessons have a funny way of adding up. Just keep counting on the Korner for next week, North Penn.