#my dad pressured me into taking calculus BC and the AP exam and I think I still have ulcers I’m getting over from that era

[anerdyfeminist]

Re: the topic of how nostalgic this year has made me…2 different people in the past 2 days have reminded me of how I used to be a math tutor. (Idk how, but I had totally forgotten that was one of the many things absorbing my time back in the era of the Start of Family Crises Years. I’ll blame lack of sleep and said crises.) I mean, sure, I tutored friends and stuff all along the way, but what I mean I had forgotten specifically is how in HS my junior and seniors years, like any good nerd, I went through a process to become an officially school approved tutor for everything that came before calculus. They sent me kids who were struggling whose parents asked for help and I got to charge $20/hour. In 2001 that was EYE POPPINGLY high and I had a sweet hustle of prob like 3-6 students at a time I met with a couple times a month. And that rate of pay was almost four times my minimum wage food job.

God I hated math though 😂 I could do it well and I really enjoyed tutoring others and finding ways to help someone’s specific needs to “get” a concept. Looking back, that was a preview of so much of the work I’d do in youth development for years after. My childhood friend and I were catching up the other day and she told me I was better at explaining 8th grade math than her teacher 😭 I was so flattered. Unfortunately my dad pressured and pushed me so much about math and made it so anxiety producing that I forget that I was naturally probably quite talented at it back then (my brain has changed m a s s i v e l y in this regard in the passing 20 years.)

Makes me wonder how I would have been if my dad didn’t do that shit.

Then, unrelatedly, today Ronald randomly reminded me I used to tutor an extremely annoying boy who he based a character on in his latest script 😂 It was so weird to have these 2 memories come up back to back, w/o having mentioned it to Ronald or anything. The brain and memory is so mysterious. Some stuff from that period of time I can remember in such detail it’s like I’m tasting and smelling the early aughts and other massive things aka my math side gig were completely out of my mind last week. Wouldn’t have passed a test on it about myself.