Mathematic-a-phobia

           After biking home from class today, I stumbled into my apartment, shook off my shoes and crawled into bed. Even as I write this, my eyes are red and puffy, my heart is beating irregular and my lungs feel like they are hiding under a 50-ton bolder. Today was not my day. Everyday is not my day when it comes to math.

Let me rewind a bit. I am taking Math 95 (pretty much the lowest placement you can get in college, it doesn’t even count for college credit but I have to take it for my major. What kind of BS is that?) AGAIN because I failed it last winter.

If I rewind further you get a series of disastrous test scores on the SAT, brown-nosing to the teachers in my High School so I could get a B in the class when I would seriously fail every major test, and even farther back than that you get me as a homeschooled jungle freak who only knew the eights times tables because she made up a song to go with it. No joke. I did that. 

Anyway, my day was a “horrible, no good very bad day” because of one simple (that’s not the word I would ever use though) math quiz.  Here is how it went down. I read my book, reviewed the problems, did some practice tests and felt confident about the upcoming three-problem quiz. I sat down in the desk, the teacher came in, asked us to put our books away and handed us our tests. 

            That’s when shit got crazy. I looked at the first problem and felt my face get flushed. My hands got sweaty and all of my regularly active brain juices evaporated as if it was a bowl of water in the Sahara desert. My feet began to sweat profusely about the same time the words and letters on the page began to blur. That’s when things got really messy. My lungs wouldn’t provide my brain oxygen, my heart started racing faster than when I kissed my first crush. My stomach was churning at an immense rate, if I had drank milk before class it would have turned to butter. I felt sicker than when I ate three hot dogs in a row for a bet. And then I actually had to TRY to do the stupid test. I ended up writing down a few words/numbers and turning it in later than most everyone else in the class. Crushed that any idea of me getting a good grade on the quiz, let alone the class seeing as this week just review. That’s when the tears started rolling down my face.

I walked home after class, walking my bike beside me because I thought there was a serious chance I might run into someone or something if I tried to ride while tears were streaming down my flushed face.

The moral of this story? I get to do it all again next week. Oh good.