on mathematics
The usual question of 8:30 in the morning - aka A period AP Statistics time - on a weekday is: What am I going to do in math class today?
Doing things that are not math in math class has, these past twelve years of learning arithmetic, become a sort of art. For one, I always try to sit in the back, preferably behind a tall person, so that I can go unnoticed. In past I have tried to read novels if I was seated behind someone tall and sometimes it worked, but often I felt guilty for not paying any attention at all. So nowadays, what I do commonly is compose intricate doodles and patterns in the margins. But lately, though, I have been using math class in quite an industrious way. Time to write! Nothing else to do, might as well work on Waverly.
I do feel a little badly. Just a little. The teacher is trying to teach math, but I just cannot rouse that much ill feeling about my lack of attention. I hate math. I can muster no interest whatsoever for anything mathematical. There is no emotion in a math problem and numbers are not friendly like words are. The only exception where I like numbers is dates - 1854 is boring like most numbers but when used to describe a year is evocative. But anyway. I hate math. I can't pay attention to it because of my utter lack of interest in it.
But I am wary about my grades, so I pay attention enough to keep at least an A-. Most of the time I reread the math book to understand things or look it up elsewhere. I just can't maintain attention in class! Especially when there is valuable writing to be done. Today I think I wrote quite a good bit for Waverly and turned the story in a bit of a new direction. Much more worthwhile than learning about histograms and the formula for variance!
Math can also be a good time for general speculation. Looking out the window of that tiny room at the construction trucks or, if they've moved for the day, the sun and clouds over the barn. I drift off into wonderings about the transcendentalists or lovely remembrances of an article about religion I read the past weekend. I get rather annoyed when I am pulled back by some mathematical fact or theorem or axiom, hard and rigid, seeming so dull and impersonal compared with the cloud-thoughts I've just been thinking.
Doing things that are not math in math class has, these past twelve years of learning arithmetic, become a sort of art. For one, I always try to sit in the back, preferably behind a tall person, so that I can go unnoticed. In past I have tried to read novels if I was seated behind someone tall and sometimes it worked, but often I felt guilty for not paying any attention at all. So nowadays, what I do commonly is compose intricate doodles and patterns in the margins. But lately, though, I have been using math class in quite an industrious way. Time to write! Nothing else to do, might as well work on Waverly.
I do feel a little badly. Just a little. The teacher is trying to teach math, but I just cannot rouse that much ill feeling about my lack of attention. I hate math. I can muster no interest whatsoever for anything mathematical. There is no emotion in a math problem and numbers are not friendly like words are. The only exception where I like numbers is dates - 1854 is boring like most numbers but when used to describe a year is evocative. But anyway. I hate math. I can't pay attention to it because of my utter lack of interest in it.
But I am wary about my grades, so I pay attention enough to keep at least an A-. Most of the time I reread the math book to understand things or look it up elsewhere. I just can't maintain attention in class! Especially when there is valuable writing to be done. Today I think I wrote quite a good bit for Waverly and turned the story in a bit of a new direction. Much more worthwhile than learning about histograms and the formula for variance!
Math can also be a good time for general speculation. Looking out the window of that tiny room at the construction trucks or, if they've moved for the day, the sun and clouds over the barn. I drift off into wonderings about the transcendentalists or lovely remembrances of an article about religion I read the past weekend. I get rather annoyed when I am pulled back by some mathematical fact or theorem or axiom, hard and rigid, seeming so dull and impersonal compared with the cloud-thoughts I've just been thinking.
posted by Laura at 8:52 PM
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