i always think of “stand and deliver” when lou diamond phillips walks into the classroom and says “what’s ‘kal KOO lus?”
a lot of people are bad at math, myself included. i always just kind of figured i didnt care enough about it to try to be good at it. but somehow i started looking into “dyscalculia” tonight and a lot of these symptoms fit along with the problems ive always had in math. to whatever extent i may have these symptoms, i dont think it is anything that has hindered my life. i just think it’s interesting that i notice these problems more when i am stressed out. i always figured it was brain synapses (or whatever they are) just working on other things, but maybe that’s not all. i looked at a few different sites, and some of the symptoms didnt match at all (i dont really have any trouble sight reading music, i almost never forget a name with a face or even just a name, i dont have any problems telling time and i dont have any trouble counting change) but i feel like i do have more of the symptoms than i dont. it has (thankfully) been a while since i have had to deal with a math class, but i remember only too well looking at the paper and feeling “im never going to get this so why even bother.” one thing they dont mention specifically that i have always had a problem with is that i can look at a bunch of numbers and rewrite them, but if someone dictates them to me i almost always mess up something. and one of the symptoms that they mention that i do have is one that i have always been really embarrassed about, but never would have made the connection to math issues–the problem with directions like left right west and east. just today i was at the airport and said that the city was west of us. i realized i was wrong later on, but i often have to think about it.
UPDATE: it’s an hour later now and i just realized i was right! manhattan is west of jfk. so now i dont know what that means. im bad at it, but i was right? i have no idea.