A better week

by one-11

In spite of the holiday, it's been a long week for me. At least on an emotional level. But I survived without quitting. I think that I'm almost past the "what have I done?" phase. Things are starting to look up.

I was inspired by President Obama's speech to the children of our nation this week. He requested that "whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it." He said "There is no excuse for not trying." and "The truth is, being successful is hard." And most poignant to me was "Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and that then allows you to learn something new."

At the end of last week, I had a plan for succeeding in my "bad" course. I planned to join a study group, I had a lead on someone who might be able to tutor me, and I was going to "give it my best effort." But by the end of this week, I had to accept that effort wasn't enough.

I tend to encourage my students to form study groups. I utilized them in high school and college with great success. But what I realized this week is that a study group is only helpful if you have something to contribute. You may not have a full understanding of the material, but if you understand some aspects, and others in the group understand other aspects, you can support one another and fill in the holes where information is missing.

As I sat with the study group this week, I felt that they were talking way over my head. They had attempted the assigned problems without arriving at completion. But they were able to discuss where they got stuck and what their thinking was. As each shared how they approached the problem, others were able to point out fallacies or suggest how to get further along that path of thinking. This is how a study group is supposed to work. But there I sat in the middle neither contributing nor increasing my understanding. I tried asking questions; but the answers, which were often preceded with "well we know that because", were things that I didn't know or quite understand.

My classmates were helpful, but I didn't gain any clarity and I walked away feeling less than good about myself. I had to accept that perhaps it wasn't simply a matter of forgetting. The reality is that I don't yet posses the skill sets to be successful in this course. The important word in that last sentence is yet. I couldn't see the yet until the end of the week.

I ended up speaking with my advisors and we decided that the best path for me was to take the undergraduate pre-requisite to this course. This time it was comforting to know that I wasn't the only one needing to take this option. During the first session of that class, I was relieved to realize that I understood all that the professor was discussing and I was able to follow along without stress. What was even more interesting is that I I started to see it as a puzzle again. The ability to see math as a fun puzzle is what caused me to end with a major in mathematics to begin with.

In the "bad" class, I found myself questioning why these topics were important to learn. I wanted to know what relevance any of this has to my career. This stuff was only for those who want to be "pure" mathematicians. I sounded a lot like those debating against the current graduation requirements in this state. Now that I'm in a class where I understand the material, relevance isn't on my radar. A fellow classmate actually asked the professor when we'd be doing application problems, to which the professor responded that much of the information in this class is only applicable in other mathematics courses. But because I have an understanding of the material, I wasn't bothered by that. What a change in perspective!

When my previous classmates asked me how I faired on the homework, it was initially embarrassing to admit that I had to drop the course. But it turns out that the need to take "leveling courses" is actually fairly common. Those who didn't need that support tended to have masters degrees in math instead of math education. In general, this means that they had already taken courses that gave them experience with the concepts that I'm missing.

So I had to wrestle with my self esteem a bit more this week, but I'm starting to recognize that there is a difference between lack of knowledge and an inability to comprehend. I'm able to look in the mirror and hear the words from a theme song of a 1970s show "You're going to make it after all."