I Can't Count

2005-04-20 at 9:38 p.m.

Oh dear, I just embarassed myself in physics. We were going through our exam with our lecturer, who was NOT in a good mood - no particular reason. Anyway, at one point she was working through a problem without using a calculator on the board, and asked me what 6x6 is, and I had to admit, in front of the class, that I have absolutely no idea and would need to use a calculator. She seemed a bit shocked, and more so when I admitted that not only do I not know any of my multiplication tables but that, in shops, I have to round everything up to ten and cannot do division. I have almost no basic maths skills, and have to count on my fingers. As a result she treated me like the class idiot for the rest of the time we were there. Its not that I can't do the sums we are set - I can - but I need a calculator, and without it I am completely lost. So naturally she made remarks that I would have to get better otherwise I would be a danger when working as a radiographer.

It was very embarassing, the more so because I know that my maths are bad, but I've been working most of my life to improve them and I just don't seem able to do so. I tried for years to learn the times tables and they never stuck in my head, I have some habits, I suppose, in maths that I cannot overcome. For instance, when I'm counting on my fingers, only if I use all five fingers on one hand and my first two fingers on the other does that mean "seven" to me, any other combination does not. I blame it on not learning to count until I was eight, four years behind normal people, and trying to catch up with my yeargroup in a hurry, while taking their normal maths classes alongside my remedial ones.

But enough of that, the good news is that I understood, pretty much, our class on quantum physics, which was not so exciting as I was hoping. Plus we don't have to hand in our assignment until next week as that lecturer is away so I didn't have to admit I had not done it. And the class were nice, even through my rather public shaming, and promptly all said they were bad at arithmetic too, even though they aren't. Wonder what was wrong with the woman today, she seemed to get her knife into me and some others even though she's normally nice to everyone.

I've just spent a ridiculous amount on batteries because I couldn't face the bus journey home without any music.

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