Monday, April 30, 2007

Happy Days

THANK YOU ANONYMOUS PEOPLE!
I was able to buy cat food and my migraine meds. Now I just have to worry about food and have my fingers crossed that my school will award me financial aid so I don't need to scrape by on my paltry disability pay (making the choice between food and paying bills is hard. I keep saying 'well I don't need power really' Now I need a bunch of free candles to fall into my lap so I can eat.)

And I ACED my Linear Algebra 2 test! WOO WOO! I feel like a math genius!

9 comments:

Abadiebitch said...

Great Job on the Math Test. I thought of you earlier today when I was remembering my relationship with Math some 15 years ago. LOL!

lost clown said...

Nice. DO you not love math anymore?

Endymion said...

Way to go, lost. Was there one extemely difficult question that gave you the most satisfaction in answering correctly?

Abadiebitch said...

It seems weird now that I think about it, but I neither love nor hate math, I am simply indifferent to it. I started thinking about it after I read some of your posts. I remember when I had to take the two required maths in college, college algebra and finite were the two I had chosen. I also took an introduction to Algebra that was not college credited before the semester that I took the Algebra. Well I took the Algebra and Finite the same semester, which I had to get approval to do so, but I received A’s or maybe even A+’s in both classes. I even tutored. Strange. I won’t say it is not challenging because it wasn’t in a sense. What it was and what I think may be the problem for people who cannot do math is the perception that comes with math. My parents were high school dropouts, they practically raised up (whether they meant to or not) to believe Math and similar topics to be beyond our capability. Couple that with the mentality of the high school I went to, which was vocational in focus and I had convinced myself I could not do math. Not the convincing and fretting many people do like “oh, it is so difficult,” no, just a flat out, “I am not wired to do it therefore I cannot do it.” Yet the minute I had to do it, I did it. I remember a question in Finite asking statistically which numbers are more likely to show up in the lottery (at the time, Texas had just begun the Lottery), 1, 2, 3,4,5,6 or some six random numbers (the professor gave some numbers). I said the odds were the same, it just looks different to us because we recognize the pattern of 1, 2, 3,4,5,6 and not the pattern of a random number. There was this boy, perhaps “man” who hated my guts, the kind of hate you but don’t know you. He was competitive and was always racing to answer first. The professor had us divide up, who thinks the odds are the same and who thinks the odds for one set is greater than the other. I was all alone, even the girl I tutored did not side with me. HAH! I was right the odds were the same. Yet after those two classes, I somewhat just dumped it all, as if I only retained it for the purpose of the class and nothing more. That is how I finally decided English was my major. I can read a novel or short story, and if it is good, really good, (who am I kidding it works the same even when it is not good) the characters, the setting, the plot, allusions, etc will stay with me for a lifetime. You, lovely Literature “pierce my soul,” like Captain Wentworth tells Anne Elliot in Austen’s Persuasion. I don’t know how old you are, but I honestly think looking back, I will never know if I was meant to be a mathematician or not, because I think as a girl growing up in the late 60’s and 70’s and coming to age in the early 80’s I was not expected to like Math or Science, much less study it. Maybe the middle class women were already being introduced to the disciplines reserved for boys, but we in the poorer neighborhoods were still practicing the old default, man goes to work, and woman gets married to that man. But as you can see, I am trying to write more when I am in the mood. Because I do in fact read like a zealot and listen intensely, but slack off when it comes to writing and speaking of what I am thinking or have read, so I am trying to actuate the pack I made with myself and put the thoughts in my head down on paper.

Again, great job on the test!

Abadiebitch said...

If you ever get bored, here is a story I read last summer about the math community. It is a true story,

"Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who solved a key piece in a century-old puzzle known as the Poincaré conjecture, was one of four mathematicians awarded the Fields Medal today" and did not accept it.

It has all the makings, greed, fighting, inter-group fightings, murder, okay not murder, but the whole lot got really nasty. I enjoyed every word of it.


http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2

Abadiebitch said...

Sorry for the serial commenting, the link cut off.

Trying again:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2

Abadiebitch said...

Okay, I will divide the link, but then you will have to put it together, for some reason, perhaps it is too long, it is cutting a portion of it off.


http://www.newyorker.com/archive

plus

/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2

lost clown said...

endymion: not really. I am happy I got 5 out of 7 on the problem that the whole class struggled with.

CM: It's not just you, and it's not just then. Girls have always been dissuaded from pursuing the STEM fields (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). It's a cutural problem too.

Anonymous said...

nice post, it's really interesting for me today, thx

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