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The Newsletter >
Doing the Math
January 27, 2009
I have become the mad woman of Kissimmee Park Road. Evidence includes: wandering about day and night muttering wildly to self, hair akimbo, clothes askew—bra-less. In my opinion, the lack of proper foundation (that’s how we say it here in the South—lack of foundation) is a sure sign of female insanity. There have been unsubstantiated reports of howling at the waning moon coming from my bedroom, but you will need to talk to the neighbors about that.
It is my third week of Intermediate College Algebra, and I have done the math. There is a hundred percent chance that I have already been driven mad, and there is a one in three chance that I will not survive the semester. It’s not that people haven’t offered to “tutor” me. Again, doing the math, by my calculations I have had 6.043x offers of help from 3/4y of the state of Florida.
If you’re unfamiliar with the “tutoring” concept, I’ll explain. “Tutoring” consists of me watching people take my writing utensil out of my hand and then watching my “tutor” work through the problem and saying, “See?”
If my “tutor” is my husband, he will work through the problem with my writing utensil 7.8xy times, each time saying, “See?” louder and louder. Apparently, I am deaf and blind.
Because I am not deaf and blind, I say, “Yes, I see and hear you doing algebra with my writing utensil.”
Unfortunately, none of my 33,000/13 tutors will be allowed in the testing area, so that I can watch and listen to them do algebra on my test. Sigh.
One person’s advice about the algebraic experience was “to make algebra a game.” This person is not my friend. This person probably adds up the numbers on license plates, divides them by nine, and puts the results in a graph that they cross-stitch. No offense to people who do this.
I cried bitter tears of rage and hate last night, because I did the math. I calculated that on the math problems that consist of greater than 76 bits of numbers and less than 22 clumps of letters, I have a statistical probability of making 4 trillion mistakes. I wanted to call a “tutor.” It was 2:37am in the morning divided by 2x Tylenol PM.
Madness isn’t so bad, and bras are just a symbol of male domination and overt, residual sexism held over from the archaic customs of a white European imperialist presence perpetuated by greed and the male desire for total female subjugation.
I’m in college. Can you tell?
Linda (Stamp Out Math) Zern
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