Math phobia

If the saying “Man is afraid of what he cannot understand” were applied to me, Math would be comparable Sadako, a creature that freaks me out so bad, a shriek normally follows whenever I see or think about her. While I don’t scream whenever I am faced with exotic mathematical equations, the prospect having to solve one is enough to reduce me to a pile of sobs and sweat.

Unlike my fear of the supernatural, my dread for Math is rational. For more than half of my academic life, math whooped me silly. And I think it’s only normal for people getting pummeled by something to eventually fear that something.

Except for kinder to second grade and a brief moment in college, I was terrified of math. It’s not that I am inept with numbers. My problem with this subject is that it usually takes me twice as long to grasp its concepts. I eventually understand the lessons but when I get to the eureka moment we’re already moving on to another topic.

Now, I can brag that mathematical problems involving the four basic procedures I can solve easily without any help from any electronic gadget. Then again I am already 22 and this is expected of me. But when it involves the x and y things, theorems, postulates, and other countless concepts that have been snuffed out my head already or I never understood in the first place, I am as good as a semi-literate person.

So who to blame for this predicament? Maybe I should pin it on incompetent teachers who never had the skills and competence to make me interested enough in the subject? Perhaps former classmates are also culpable for not extending a helping hand to a struggling colleague. But ultimately, it’s on me. My poor grades were largely due to my laziness. I know that If only exerted more effort in Math (or all my subjects for that matter but that’s another article), my grades would have been a lot better. I would not have warranted a Promil commercial but at the very least, my grades in Math would not always have begun with 7. I always believed that if I had not behaved properly during my Math classes or not sucked up to my teachers by volunteering to erase the blackboards, I may not have graduated from high school.

It was also in high school where I proved that the claim that men are supposed to be better in math is a fallacy. I studied in an exclusive school for boys but even there arithmetic whizzes were a minority. In my last years in high school, it was even a common prank to question the practical applications of the complicated mathematical formulas we were studying. The teachers would always answer that it helps nurture reasoning. Not true, as an experience of mine proved.

In a geometry quiz we had in third year, a question required that we prove that an illustration was indeed a 90 degree angle using the theorems and other stuff taught to us. Around me some classmates, with furrowed eyebrows and occasional gazes to the ceiling to recall what they studied the night before, were furiously scribbling down their answers. Those who did not study were trying to copy from those who did. Me? I had nothing after I wrote “Given” in my booklet. With only a few minutes to go and having written my guesses for the other questions, the 90 degree problem still had the lonely “Given” in it. Grudgingly, I wrote a few words hoping that those were the right answers.

A week later our papers were returned and I felt disappointed. It was not because I flunked the test—countless failed math quizzes have already erased any illusions that I have an untapped aptitude for math—but due to the realization that my brilliant my answer for the 90 degree question was not accepted. I wrote there:

“Ma’am, I took out a protractor and I measured the angle. It is indeed 90 degrees.”

If that was not reasoning skills in action, I don’t know what is? At least I should have been credited with two points for my effort. Ok, so it was stupid but it was worth a shot.

In seriousness though, I am not proud of being mathematically challenged. It’s not that we get special tax breaks for being afflicted with this condition. Also a grown man whose greatest fears include Math and a dead girl who comes out of TV screens is not a funny thing. By this time, people my age should be afraid of scarier matters such as another GMA-7 rip-off-slash-remake (e.g. Shaido) and the alleged vice-presidential aspirations of Sen. Bong Revilla Jr.

I thought that I have finally escaped my Math problems by choosing a career in writing. But I realized one day that I was wrong for thinking this. Eventually I would have children and there’s a very real possibility they would suck at math too just because they are related to me. And if they turn out as bad in Math as I was, I guess I would be one of the first people they would ask help from. In a few years it’s back to Math again for me. Such is the wide reach of Math’s long arms.

I plan to preempt this situation by hitting the books again. When I finish this new foray into the world of numbers, I hope that I will no longer break into a nervous sweat or get all sorts of nightmares whenever I get prolonged exposure to Math. If I can only figure out how to stop screaming while watching horror movies, I’m all set.

*Here is the edited version of this article.