I’m going to confess, in elementary school and high school I was never really a mathy kid. Quite the contrary in fact, I think it was the fourth grade where my computational skills were markedly slower than all the other little kids… and I knew it. I seem to recall reasoning along the lines of ‘this is why we have calculators’. But in elementary school calculators are the infinitely dirty word of the school system. Computation is key, and if you’re behind in math, well maybe it’s just not your thing.

I have since learned that Math probably was my thing.

After all, I was a lifelong lover of science (and wisdom haha). I loved logic and reasoning puzzles. I liked when things worked out logically, solving problems and was always in awe of the world I was a part of. It was sort of my thing, the nerd. I think this was how I eventually ended up in Philosophy. Math was definitely not my thing, and you can’t go into science or technology without math, and so I found myself in Philosophy arguably the most scientific of the arts.

I remember so clearly in high school, you are either in the science stream or the arts one. Period. You’re either an impractical hippie or a humourless drone. Job, or soul. Like its some kind of either or thing. And for me the rock in the road was always the mathematics. I could build a computer program in grade 10, but I was completely an artsie. Obviously. I took history and stuff, and always had my ass handed to me in math.

When you want to understand the all encompassing everything though these lines make things difficult. And this all started when I couldn’t multiply as fast as the others in the fifth grade.

It started to occur to me over the past few years that math is something interesting. I took Pre-Calculus last year under the pretence of needing it for a Computer Science Minor (technically true, but I could have minored in any number of things that wouldn’t have needed math). I’d been under some sort of personal conviction that mathematics was something that I should be good at.

I still had my ass handed to me.

The difference was I wasn’t left hopeless and convinced I wasn’t a math kid. I actually came out curious, yeah, okay, marks did not reflect but my memories of the class were a barrage of equations, minimal explanations, hellfire, all at eight thirty in the morning. Not the prof (actually a grad student)’s fault, tons of material, no time etc. But I think what I won there was a springboard and the confidence to keep going, despite my GPA begging I stop being so cruel to it.

And so I think, Philosophy of Math, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology. These things all exist. The thought of Physics and Philosophy makes me giddy, string theories, movement. Unfortunately this is all stuff I have to go backwards to learn so that I can apply ideas to what I think. Because back in High School I was an artsie kid, and taking science or math would only serve to drop my average and then no university would ever take me. And besides– a structured major at any University is not open to this idea, they want you to learn Science or Philosophy. One or the other, take your pick.

This is the part that gets me. I’m going to school to learn. Obviously. This is what school is for. But I am not allowed to learn what I want to learn. Instead I have to hedge around what I have an aptitude for to keep my GPA in check, or my average high. So I was told I wasn’t good at math, yeah, I still would probably take a few minutes to recall 7×8 but math and science aren’t even close to being about that. I understand why they have to do this, not every student — hell — most students don’t want to learn. They want the paper, the degree or the diploma and I can accept that. But I think as far as those of us who want to learn we have been put in the most hostile environment of all time.