Math. Hated it. Decided in second grade I didn't need to learn multiplication tables. No need for them. Somehow, because I was good in other subjects, I was in honors math in high school. In my junior year, it became obvious I didn't belong there...what a relief!!! I've still never used the crap we were learning past algebra. My 7 year old son is freaking Will Hunting. He's a math whiz. We can't challenge him enough with numbers. He loves them. His teacher gave us extra work to challenge him with square roots. For a second grader. More proof that the milk man must have been a tremendous mathematician, cuz that can't be my son!!! (aside from his passionate love of the Houston Astros)
Art - first class I ever got a C in, because I can't even draw a straight line without a ruler. On the other hand, I aced art history in college... I can't wait to take the GRE this summer, since I need to do well to make up for my terrible GPA.
For all those of you who "hate math", shame on you. For all those of you who think "you will never use this in life" when you're taking Calculus, Trig, Chemistry, etc., you don't get it. They're not teaching you how to solve a DIFFERENTIAL, they're not teaching you how to find the Sin of 1, they're teaching you how to solve a problem, and how you approach it. If you want to get ahead in life, MATH is the only subject (besides Gov't and maybe Chemistry or Science), where you can't disprove a fact such as 1+1=2, which will ALWAYS be true. Take History, for example. In high school and college, they tell you what the reason was for the British losing the colonies. These might change over time. You can prove them wrong or discuss it, but you can't do the same with mathematics' concepts. You must have learned how to prove that the line in front of you is parallell to the line behind you and then you learned how to prove someone how to do the same. Only THEN you learned... by solving problems. Later, you weren't really learning GEOMETRY, but how to use it for POOL. Anyways, I didn't have a WORST subject, I only had a GOOD subject... maybe arguing a point wasn't my strongest skill, but at least I know how to solve a problem. This is where COMPUTERS and PROGRAMMING use my math skills. MATH is a practice subject. If you don't continue to practice it, you won't learn it. I was lazy and didn't turn in work in time, or didn't complete my homework, that's why I didn't do so well in some subjects, but that didn't mean I didn't learn them. In fact, I got a C- in Accounting 'cuz I didn't want to do my work or practice it. I got lazy. Stop being lazy and learn your math. Lady_Di, I thought you said you were a web programmer, you should be GOOD in math... you probably just needed a little more practice... no?
Yes, I'm a programmer. I see what you mean. I use the concept of problem solving when coding. However, when it comes to NUMBERS and JUMBO MUMBO, I just can't get my mind to figure them out quickly. Maybe I have a math disorder (I don't think there is a such thing). Who knows? MoBalls just called you pendejo.
The straw that broke the camel's back for my college career: Fundamental Statistics of Psychology. Came out of left field for me. I was already disenfranchised with Psych, this just pushed me out the door.
I hate to say this but I agree completely, 100%, with this post! As for me, I grew up with 2 teachers (now retired) as parents, so I always felt the pressure to do well in every subject. Honestly, high school was a joke for me. I thought that history would be what I would major in at college, but I didn't like all the reading and writing papers that went with it (as well as the fact that all it seemed you could do with it was either teach or go to law school). I never cared for either English or Spanish, but mainly due to writing and reading novels (for English) and a bad teacher (for Spanish). My Spanish teacher was so ridiculously easy - it is really hard for me to express how ridiculous she was. Needless to say, I didn't learn anything in the 2 years I had that class. I do think that foreign languages would have probably given me the most problems but I will never know since I never had a good teacher for it. In college, I made 2 C's (both my sophomore year in the fall when I took a ridiculous schedule that included calculus 3, linear algebra, and macroeconomics among others). The C's were in the first semester of calculus-based physics (classic newtonian mechanics) and FORTRAN programming. However, I got an A in the 2nd semester of physics and made 2 A's in the other computer science classes I took (Pascal programming and numerical analysis), so I feel it was more the professors I had then the classes themselves (although the classes were tough). I would probably say that the hardest classes I had in college were the first semester of organic chemistry (pulled a B), a principles of biochemistry class (also pulled a B) and 2 semesters of advanced calculus (got B's in both). I remember not liking the only semester of stats that I had to take, but that was more due to it being probability theory than actual statistics. Then when I got to grad school, I made 2 C's - one in graph theory (terrible, terrible teacher) and one in metric spaces (which was like a topology class). So, after all of this convoluted response, I would go with the metric spaces class. Hated that class with a passion, lol.
