northern

Hey there!

Well, it's been awhile, as usual, since my last update.

Not a lot to report though. My mood is still blah. I wish I could tell you that I was feeling good, but at least I'm not feeling awful. Just blah.



I will let you in on a little secret though. A few years ago, I decided to take high school math again. It's been more than two decades since I did any math, and I was a horrible student, especially in math. Well, in math and French, but French was even more hopeless for me than math.

High school and I didn't get along. I skipped numerous days and rarely studied, except for last minute cramming. And cramming isn't very effective even if you did attend all your classes.

Besides, I hope to one day go back to university. I did graduate high school. Grade 12 diploma, though this was back when Ontario had a grade 13. Yes, they used to have five years of high school here. And you needed your Grade 13 diploma to go to university. So I went to work after dropping out of Grade 13 three times, at two different schools. Then in my twenties, I applied to York University, in Toronto, as a mature student. I attended for a year and a bit, until I got too ill mentally to continue. I did get a few credits though, including a few in my major of psychology.

Someday I'd like to take more courses. I have no idea how. The nearest university is two hours away, and a single course costs about what I get on disability for a month, when you include textbooks. So I have no idea how I'd ever afford it. And student loans are out since I'd only be taking one course at a time, and I still owe for all the loans I had years ago.

Nonetheless, I'm fascinated by science courses - psychology, biology, you name it.

But I don't really have the math and science base to be able to take those kind of courses.

So a few years ago, I figured I'd take high school math again. Though it could be argued I'd be taking for the first time, since between the poor attendence the first time, and the passage of so much time, it'd be new to me.

I signed up to take Grade 9 math. Here in Ontario, you can take high school courses by distance learning, and it only costs $40/course.

I remembered the stuff from the first unit of the course. Easy things like figuring out percentages and ratios. Nothing too taxing. But it was clearly just as a refresher.

I got 100% on the first unit. Then 100% on the second unit. Then 97% on the third unit, and one of the lost marks was from being careless and only answering the first part of the question.

I dove into the fourth and final unit. Got about halfway through. Then I hit a question that nearly drove me insane. I read it over and over and it always seemed like the question was missing something needed to answer it.

After awhile, I decided to give it a few days and then try again. Same problem. This happenned a few times, over the course of a few weeks.

Two problems arose. The first was that I was too stubborn to ask for help. They offer help online and by phone (certain times and days), but no, I had been aceing the course and wasn't going to ask for help. The second was that because I procrastinate between units, I was only a couple weeks shy of the deadline for completing the course.

Well, guess what, I ended up dropping the course.

Groan.

Gave up for a year, then signed up again last year. (You can take the course a second time if you need to).

Here's the stupid thing, I did the first three units by simply rewriting and submitting my work from the first try, correcting my couple mistakes in the third unit.

This is really stupid. Because I had already forgotten much of the material. My memory is pretty bad for a lot of things, but especially numbers.

So I basically faked my way through the first three-quarters of the course. Not very bright.

And, procrastinating as usual, I found myself facing the final unit with a month left in the course, and having to redo the whole course.

But here's the amazing thing - I actually managed to plow my way through it. I was forcing myself to get up by noon (trust me - that's a big deal for me), and then take myself to the library and redo everything. I was going most days, sitting for hours, doing it all.

And when I got to the question that stumped me, well, it still stumped me. But I kept doing every variation of every calculation I could think of, and solved it on the calculator. Then I went to write it down. And then I forgot what I did, because I had been frantically trying every calculation, I couldn't remember what I had actually done to solve it. So I tried everything again. Solved it again. Forgot it again.

I'm serious. Trust me, if you've ever met me, or talked to me, I don't think I usually come across as braindead. But man, this was making me feel stupid.

Thank God, the third time I solved it, I managed to remember it long enough to write down.



So.... now I'm waiting to find out my mark on it, and waiting for them to schedule my final exam. The exam scares the crap out of me. Unlike the course work, it's closed-book. They do provide a practice test on their website, which I'll be doing soon. (Honest!). And thankfully, the test does provide a sheet with formulas, things like figuring out the volume of a cylinder, that kind of thing. BUT - they don't provide the key sequences for figuring out things on the scientific graphing calcultor. And I'm serious, remembering all the steps is harder than some of the math.



I have to say a few things about taking a 'basic' math course. One, trust me, when it's been a couple decades since you've done anything beyond addition and subtraction, you really are starting from scratch again. Two, high school math had become much harder. Back in the 80's when I took it, calculators weren't as complicated. Now that anyone can punch in a few buttons and figure out something like standard deviation, they expect you to be able to do it. Although I skipped a lot of classes, I'm certain we weren't expected to be able to the kind of calculations expected today. Third, I'm disappointed to admit that I actually felt old taking the course. When I was young, I studied while listening to music. It actually helped. At least it seemed to. Now, I find that I need mostly silence in order to take in what I'm reading.


Anyways, like I said, I'm waiting to find out how I did on the final unit, and I should be taking the exam in a few weeks. Wish me luck.