I used to be bad at math

I used to be really bad at math. Now I’m not.

When I was getting my undergraduate degree, that’s a story I would have wanted to hear more of. So maybe, by sharing my story, I can help other people struggling with math to push through the difficulties like the ones I faced.

When I first got to the University of Michigan, I had only gotten through Pre-calc. I signed up for Calc I, not because I was super interested in it, but because that seemed like a college type class to take. It ended up having several hundred people, and though we were in a section of 15–20 students, we would all take exams at the same time.

My classmates had mostly taken Calculus before, and some had even tested into Calc III, but wanted ‘an easy class’. There were also a lot of pre-med, pre-engineers, pre-business, and pre-everything else who really needed to get an A for their grad school dreams.

I was really impressed by how hard they worked and how everything sort of came naturally to them, but I wasn’t prepared for the class to be curved. I ended up getting a low B on the first exam, and despite doubling down and working much harder, a low C on the second one. I did all of the things you’re told to do: I worked harder, I attended office hours, and I did extra problems for hours. My other classes more or less went on the backburner, and I spent all of my time working on this class. It wasn’t enough, though, and I ended up with a B in the course.

Looking back, a B isn’t actually so bad. I’ve done MUCH worse in math classes since. However, for me, that was probably my lowest point in math.

Coming out of Calc I, I swore to never take another math class. Probably because I was surrounded by people who saw my hard work and said things like ‘You know, some people are just bad at math.’ or ‘Your education just didn’t set you up to study math. Maybe you should try taking easier courses.’

I’m fortunate that I was taking a logic class at the time that I really liked. It was super basic stuff, but a really fun introduction. I decided after that class that I wanted to take a more advanced logic class, and then after that, all of the logic courses required a lot of math. I ended up taking more math a year later. I’d like to say that after a year away from math, I was suddenly super good at it, or that I really enjoyed the next few math courses I was taking. In all honesty, they were a struggle.

Part of it was that it was just difficult stuff, and part of it was that I still felt like I was a person who was bad at math.

I think this idea that people are born good or bad at math is really toxic. In inspirational movies, we get all these dramatic montages of people becoming good at an instrument or performing or doing martial arts through hard work and practice, but with math we get people staring at totally blank walls and seeing magical equations sort themselves into a useable solution.

As a culture, I think we buy into this idea that if you didn’t get a good math training in early childhood or you aren’t some super genius, you’re destined to never be able to work with numbers. But math works like everything else in life — if you work on it, you’ll improve. In hindsight, it’s really sad that I was almost turned away from math, not just because it’s something I’m actively studying but because there are so many areas in my life where reasoning about quantitative problems is really important.

Going through the experience of being really bad at math before I was good at math also taught me how to be a better mentor. I know what it’s like to look at the symbols and not know where to begin, and now I know what to do to get past that feeling.

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