Arithmetic
I dislike mathematics. I don't trust the concepts that I think I learned some eons back. I know I can figure percentages and I know I can estimate stuff... but I prefer having a calculator close by and I will worry a chart to pieces if the mathematics is bogus. (Think: big company politics as relates to sales goals and multipling various numbers not really related just so you can get some kind of point system to score a contest.)
The reason I prefer any subject to math is that I moved frequently as a child and I never got a full understanding of the goals of many common arithmetic processes. When someone starts reciting specific percentages and various averages and starts talking about how you can play with the equation to obtain a result....I tune out. It's a defensive mechanism. I don't have to pretend I understand because the discussion is boring me to the point of extinction. While my military family moved from base to base and I switched schools and teachers and textbooks, I lost continuity (I DO know some mathematical terms!) of lessons and I always felt that I didn't have all the pieces of the secret puzzle that leads to happiness and the ability to balance a checkbook. Ok, add the interest too. I mean my interest in balancing the checkbook, not what the bank pays to your account because you let them borrow your money for a little while. I could care less if the checkbook is all neat and orderly with all the entries (credits and debits) duly noted and balanced. I don't care as long as I have enough in the checkbook to insure that my checks won't "bounce". ( I don't think "bounce" is a true mathematical term.)
My mathematical insecurities have led to many spousal arguments and finally to a humorous acceptance that I will only spend my "allowance" and that I am permitted to treat shopping as therapy. Other military kids, and kids with migrant parents, and kids who have been raised by a succession of adults who may or may not be related to them: all of us have insecurities because we were unable to sink deep roots into communities who knew our strengths and our weaknesses and our talents and our bad habits and the habits of our ancestors and our assorted siblings, and knowing all this loved us anyway. Some of us became high achievers who were determined to make those inconstant communities sit up and notice us, and some of us gave up on ambition because historically we knew that it would be wasted effort as we would soon be moving again and we understood that it was better just to ride the waves that we were given and not worry about tomorrow's waves. Some of us also didn't do well with long term peer and love relationships because we didn't have the necessary life skills training and experience that comes with mending fences and patching up things with the on-again, off-again friends who would still be there when we got up the next day and who would still be there when we graduated from junior high to high school and who might also attend the same college. We rootless children had friends who moved away or we moved away and we would write one or two letters and then we would make a new best friend and we slowly forgot the ones from "my last school".
But mathematics is critical to an optician.
We have to be able to recognize the numerals that a doctor may scribble on a prescription copy, and we have to be able to recognize if the doctor (or their chairside technician) has forgotten an element of the Rx. We have to be able to evaluate the form that the prescription correction will take in various eyewear and we have to be able to recontruct the doctor's form to make the Rx into a usable pair of eyewear even though the doctor may have specified only one solution. We have to be able to do this without tampering with the Rx and we have to be able to explain it to the patient. And we have to make the final product look and feel good. It doesn't hurt if we can do it swiftly and discount the price. (More math.)
Therefore (you didn't think this would ever reach a conclusion, did you?), I have developed a healthy respect for SOME math. And I have a healthy respect for the paycheck that allows me to mostly ignore my checkbook.
~~And one concept will always give me trouble: why is it that no matter what age my skin is on the outside, and no matter what age my joints complain of on the inside, my brain and my emotions still say I am seventeen years old and always will be????
Somewhere lost in time and inside of me, in one of those near forgotten and misty black and white photo places, is a new kid who just wants to fit in with the cool people, and who just wants to be able to pass the algebra exam, who is daydreaming of getting asked to the prom, and who has not yet been introduced to bifocals.
The reason I prefer any subject to math is that I moved frequently as a child and I never got a full understanding of the goals of many common arithmetic processes. When someone starts reciting specific percentages and various averages and starts talking about how you can play with the equation to obtain a result....I tune out. It's a defensive mechanism. I don't have to pretend I understand because the discussion is boring me to the point of extinction. While my military family moved from base to base and I switched schools and teachers and textbooks, I lost continuity (I DO know some mathematical terms!) of lessons and I always felt that I didn't have all the pieces of the secret puzzle that leads to happiness and the ability to balance a checkbook. Ok, add the interest too. I mean my interest in balancing the checkbook, not what the bank pays to your account because you let them borrow your money for a little while. I could care less if the checkbook is all neat and orderly with all the entries (credits and debits) duly noted and balanced. I don't care as long as I have enough in the checkbook to insure that my checks won't "bounce". ( I don't think "bounce" is a true mathematical term.)
My mathematical insecurities have led to many spousal arguments and finally to a humorous acceptance that I will only spend my "allowance" and that I am permitted to treat shopping as therapy. Other military kids, and kids with migrant parents, and kids who have been raised by a succession of adults who may or may not be related to them: all of us have insecurities because we were unable to sink deep roots into communities who knew our strengths and our weaknesses and our talents and our bad habits and the habits of our ancestors and our assorted siblings, and knowing all this loved us anyway. Some of us became high achievers who were determined to make those inconstant communities sit up and notice us, and some of us gave up on ambition because historically we knew that it would be wasted effort as we would soon be moving again and we understood that it was better just to ride the waves that we were given and not worry about tomorrow's waves. Some of us also didn't do well with long term peer and love relationships because we didn't have the necessary life skills training and experience that comes with mending fences and patching up things with the on-again, off-again friends who would still be there when we got up the next day and who would still be there when we graduated from junior high to high school and who might also attend the same college. We rootless children had friends who moved away or we moved away and we would write one or two letters and then we would make a new best friend and we slowly forgot the ones from "my last school".
But mathematics is critical to an optician.
We have to be able to recognize the numerals that a doctor may scribble on a prescription copy, and we have to be able to recognize if the doctor (or their chairside technician) has forgotten an element of the Rx. We have to be able to evaluate the form that the prescription correction will take in various eyewear and we have to be able to recontruct the doctor's form to make the Rx into a usable pair of eyewear even though the doctor may have specified only one solution. We have to be able to do this without tampering with the Rx and we have to be able to explain it to the patient. And we have to make the final product look and feel good. It doesn't hurt if we can do it swiftly and discount the price. (More math.)
Therefore (you didn't think this would ever reach a conclusion, did you?), I have developed a healthy respect for SOME math. And I have a healthy respect for the paycheck that allows me to mostly ignore my checkbook.
~~And one concept will always give me trouble: why is it that no matter what age my skin is on the outside, and no matter what age my joints complain of on the inside, my brain and my emotions still say I am seventeen years old and always will be????
Somewhere lost in time and inside of me, in one of those near forgotten and misty black and white photo places, is a new kid who just wants to fit in with the cool people, and who just wants to be able to pass the algebra exam, who is daydreaming of getting asked to the prom, and who has not yet been introduced to bifocals.
posted by Tnoptimom at 12:47 AM
<< Home