I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with math, leaning heavily towards the latter. It was always something I was good at, but didn’t enjoy. Quite frankly, it still stuns me on a regular basis that I’ve ended up working for a math company. Let me try to parse this out by saying that math has been intrinsically tied to every definitive choice I’ve made, consciously or unconsciously.
In my own math education, fifth grade stands out as a pivotal time for me. Once a month, our teacher would hand out timed math tests where we had to complete something like 100 arithmetic problems in 3 minutes.
I failed. Repeatedly.
Michelle Nguyen
This post is part of an ongoing series of stories about our personal relationships with mathematics. We introduced this series in a recent post. Today’s math story is from Michelle Nguyen, copy editor here at Desmos.
I grew up believing that there are two types of people: those who are good at math and those who aren’t. I had been convinced that our aptitude for math was a born trait, a characteristic inextricably woven into our genetics, like eye shape or hair texture. I also noticed that being “good at math” was reserved for certain people in our society. Math people were geniuses, “model minorities,” destined for lucrative careers, boys. I fell into some of those boxes but right outside of others.
