#ilona yaps about her fear of maths

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

y’know i didn’t mind maths as a subject until year 3, where the teacher we had for maths on like a wednesday or whatever decided to scream at me from my desk and be all like: “HOW DARE YOU NOT HAVE A NEAT MATHS BOOK??? YOU CALL THAT A TRACED SQUARE???? WHATS WRONG WITH YOU??? SEE CHILDREN!!! THIS IS THE TYPE OF WORK WE DONT WANT IN YOUR MATHS BOOKS!!!! *shows my maths book to the class and tears the page out* DRAW/TRACE THAT SQUARE AGAIN!!! AND DO IT PROPERLY AND NEATLY THIS TIME!!!!!”

when my condition literally made me (and still makes me kind of) unable to trace shapes or draw graphs precisely.... and gave me page space issues and stuff where I couldn’t write in straight lines for doing sums where I had to carry numbers over or just generally when you had to write the numbers one on top of the other.... or even write in graph paper squares properly. like it really fucking sucked and made me loathe and fear maths from then on in school. like so much so, that I gave up on it completely and failed it in year 10; and also ended up purposely doing an events management course to get out of maths classes in years 11 & 12 bc i knew I’d fail the exam for it due to my poor book and exam presentation in maths.

like y’all if I wasn’t treated like the above by that particular maths teacher in primary school, as well as others in high school; maybe i would’ve liked maths more and tried to continue with it past school. like yes I know most of maths is about being precise (as is science, which I soon didn’t enjoy bc of the ever present enemy of maths)..... but that doesn’t fucking mean you tear out the page of a bloody 8/9 year olds kid’s book in front of the entire class and fucking shame them by telling the class that this is how you don’t present your maths book.

bc the only place that the above never happened was special ed, which was great. and also kinda sucky. bc special ed gave me maths work that was way under me in year 5, when my year group had started to do algebra questions... that they called “working mathematically”.... where everyone else in the class would get the classic farm animal legs question, where a dog or whatever has only 3 legs and that’s the answer to the question.... and similar questions every week..... but instead i literally got 4+5= 9 and other super easy problems over and over and over again.... so when i got to basic introductory algebra in year 7, i literally had no fucking idea what to do with it, and couldn’t like translate the algebra question language to numbers or whatever.

the above literally fucked me up so much in maths that it blocked me out from doing any maths related subjects like statistics that was a core subject in sociology/criminology and psychology majors/degrees, as well as science subjects at uni..... and like I know that I have to learn maths for jobs and stuff.... but I’m so terrified of having a tutor that’s my age (24) do the same bullshit that the year 3 maths teacher and other maths teachers did to me in school.

like why the fuck can’t i just avoid maths for my whole entire fucking life???? and also I know I shouldn’t be afraid of this in my 20s and in adulthood at all.... but I am??? like it’s the failure side of things I suppose???? like idk y’all. I’m just so terrified of maths lmao. bc if I’d had one teacher who’d had the fucking patience and care to read my messy asf maths work properly, maybe I would’ve enjoyed maths more and not have failed it in year 10...... then purposely avoid it ever since then.

finally, don’t even get me started on the fucking ridiculous rant my year 6 teacher had at me once for ruling my margins in my other subject books with the inches side of my ruler instead of the cm side of my ruler... bc for some reason I ruled straighter margins with the inches side than the cm side 🙄🙄😅😅.

and one last thing: if you’re training to be a maths teacher, please DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS!!!! because if you alienate kids from maths like these teachers did to me, they’re going to be terrified of it and never go back to it for the rest of their lives lmao. let them have a fucking messy maths book for fucks sake. treat kids with learning disabilities with handwriting like mine with care and patience in maths, instead of focusing so entirely on neatness and preciseness, and maybe then they will actually fucking like maths.

anyway here’s a rant for november.