To my past/present/future mathematic educators,

I know I probably wasn’t the best student, but I promise I did try to do my best. And trust me, I know you know because my 100 percent homework average can declare and advocate for me but, of course, many of you look past that and only see my 38 percent test average. I’m more than that number, no matter what you say or think.

I want to start by saying I’m sorry. I know I’m not the easiest person to teach, I’m sorry I was probably one of the worst students you’ve ever seen and I know I probably argued with you for what added up to hours over time about how I will never need this for my future and how whatever math you insisted on trying to drill into my brain is completely useless. I’m sorry for being disrespectful at any point, for looking like I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry for not understanding. I’m sorry for working so hard that I overwhelm myself to the point of tears after staring at the same page for hours on end trying to figure out why slope intercept isn’t the same as the actual slope of the line. I’m sorry you probably think I’m unteachable even though I spent countless amounts of money on a tutor to see if maybe someone else could teach me.

I want you to know that for the longest time, due to some of your attitudes towards me, I felt as if I was deemed unteachable. Things like Algebra and Geometry aren’t a walk in the park to learn and I’d like to thank you for taking the time to go to college to be an educator and teach something as scary as the difference between Sine, CoSine and Tangent. Even when it comes to fun pneumonic devices like SOH.CAH.TO.AH. Where, SOH stands for Sine equals Opposite over Hypotenuse. CAH stands for Cosine equals Adjacent over Hypotenuse. TOA stands for Tangent equals Opposite over Adjacent. That’s one of the only things I remember from Geometry, that, and how to find the perimeter and area of a shape. I’m sorry you had to spend so much extra time going over things so I could do my best to wrap my tiny brain around it and still managing to get below a 60 on every test.

I don’t mean to take up half the class by asking questions so please don’t roll your eyes at me, maybe instead have some sympathy for the fact that every math educator I’ve had since the fifth grade has pretty much just told me that “one day it’ll click” or “don’t worry, it’s in the book, you’ll get it if you actually opened it.” Yes, those are actual things that I’ve been told. It got so bad to the point where my fifth grade teacher actually had a meeting with my mom to get me tested. She was so outraged that she wrote letters to my guidance counsellor, the principal, and the superintendent. Needless to say, yes, my fifth grade teacher did retire that year (for completely unrelated reasons I’m sure because he still continued to shun me in class after all this).

I know you see me trying hard to learn because you grade my homework, I know you see me trying to learn because you see me taking notes. Do not try and tell me that I don’t care because I do. I wouldn’t be taking notes if I didn't care. I cared so much that sometimes I would go into my following classes and cry sometimes over how frustrated I was that nothing was paying off. Trust me, my English teachers became therapists and I truly don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for their guidance. I was working for hours on end on that homework that you'd tell me should only take me about “20-30 minutes.” Don’t worry, I’d never tell you that because you’d probably point me out to the whole class and make me feel like I’m the dumbest person on the planet and that’s the last thing I would want.

To this day, meeting a new math educator still makes me nervous. I don’t want to disappoint them and make them believe the things that I’m haunted by from my past. I’m sorry for being the student that causes you the most grief daily, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry we worked for weeks on topics and I got a test grade that was absolutely horrendous. Even now, I still have the paralyzing fear that every math educator in the world is going to know my name because of how terrible I am. So, I’m sorry. I tried to take notes and I did. I succeeded with the homework and if my homework average could carry me through, that would’ve been great. But it didn’t. All that matters is that I tried my best to get through, I guess.

Thanks for trying to teach me though, but my Arts degree isn’t going to involve y=x+b or whatever.