Doing the Math

I’ve never been particularly good at math.  Even though I passed my end of year Algebra exam with a 99 and my Geometry exam with a 96 in high school, I barely passed Intermediate Algebra and Trig and stayed as far away from Calculus as I could get.  Today, if presented with a basic algebraic equation, I’d struggle – trust me.

So I’m observing with understanding, sympathy and some concern as my daughter experiences her own challenges learning 7^th grade, pre-algebra math.  She can execute the computations and get the right answer, but she can’t always tell you “why” or how she completed the problem.  If you ask her to break the solution to the problem into serial operations, she’s entirely lost.  (God knows, I’m no help to her!)

I hope my daughter is better able to navigate and survive the landscape of academic math than her mother did.  (For the record, my high school Intermediate Algebra and Trig class was my last formal educational experience in math).  And, yes, I do worry, as any parent does, about my child’s ability to do well enough in school so that she’ll go on to college and be prepared for a job that interests her while providing for a comfortable life.  But I also know this:  if she’s good at balancing a checkbook and figuring out the fundamentals of money management, she’ll probably do just fine.  Despite my computational shortcomings, I’ve proven through the years to be reasonably adept at personal money management – making it seem like I had more than I really had because of my startling ability to “triage” bill payments.  A gift, I tell you!

From the way my daughter has skillfully managed as she’s gotten older to save her own money while spending mine, I’m confident she’s well on her way to figuring all this stuff out.