Jamie Phillips: Painful lessons from a mathematics class

‘Everything I learn disappears from my memory like the vapour from a jet plane fading into nothingness.’ Photo / 123rf, File

OPINION

When I walk into Room 22 for mathematics, I feel a bunch of different emotions – frustration, confusion, and embarrassment.

I find maths too hard to process in my brain. Nothing makes sense. Simple questions everyone in the class gets straight away are too difficult for me to understand. Maths is just too hard, and it makes me want to put my fist through the classroom wall.

If I spend enough time working on something, occasionally, I end up understanding it, but as soon as I enter that classroom again, everything I learned last time disappears from my memory, like the vapour from a jet plane fading into nothingness.

It’s in one ear, out the other. Gone.

Some of the things we are forced to do are so completely pointless. Who’s going to need to solve a quadratic equation, or talk SIA, COS, or COSEC in their everyday lives? Algebra is pointlessness. Why on earth would you mix letters and numbers together? That’s the equivalent of having a scoop of mint choc chip ice cream on top of some greasy fried chicken. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Maths teachers are all maths geniuses, so they don’t understand how my brain works. I sit there feeling frustrated because I’m not getting any help. They expect me to just magically know how to traverse every arc in the network and return to the starting node. They may as well try getting me to ride a unicycle while balancing five books on my head and solving a Rubik’s Cube, all at the same time. It’s impossible.

So, I sit there feeling left out, like a kid no one chooses for their basketball team.

The best maths teacher I ever had was the best because he was fun. Instead of doing maths equations that were straight-up too difficult and confusing, he made the work more enjoyable and engaging for me. He spent one on one time with me, he colour-coded things, and he made a genuine effort to help me improve.

On the other hand, the worst maths teacher I ever had didn’t give me the time of day. I would ask questions and I’d still be super-confused. This led to her giving up on me.

Even most of the kids in my maths classes are annoying. They’re the kids who sit up in the front of the class and can answer everything on the board in a split second.

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Then you have the maths whizzes who will talk down to you, heckle you, and rip into you for just simply not understanding a maths equation.

It’s a very demotivating thing to experience every day of your schooling life for years on end.

Next year, maths is going to be gone from my life, and this is going to feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Giving up maths will give me an opportunity to put 100 per cent of my focus into other subjects that I could excel at.

Escaping maths will feel like finishing my last exam of the year, it will feel like my first rugby game back after injury, or being released from prison after a life sentence.

My life post-maths is going to be like falling in love, it’s going to be like scoring the winning try, it’s going to be like being given a brand-new car.

I’m itching for this moment to arrive.

• Jamie Phillips is a Year 12 student in Wellington. From 2023, new Literacy and Numeracy / Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau co-requisite requirements will come into force.