trigonometry

I hated advanced math in high school. I hated geometry, too, but for different reasons. I hated geometry because my teacher was an idiot, and Dad tried to compensate for it by ruining every night for a semester by drilling me with the teacher's manual. To this day I don't care that the shortest distance between two points is a line.

The ACT scores came back and my stuff in the English section was through the roof. No surprises that my math scores were nothing exciting. Someone came up with a wonderful idea (sarcasm intended) for me to take advanced math to help out my ACT score. I had to lay down the law with my parents that there was to be *NO* expectations that I would even pass the class, much less do well. I didn't get it in writing, but they accepted the terms: there would be no teacher's manual lessons at home.

I explained to Mrs. Campbell that I was only in her class to help my ACT score and that I really didn't care about any math, much less advanced math. I remember that she always looked like she'd sucked on a lemon and her eyes looked like daggers even when she smiled.

And the learning began.

At first I made a few Cs, but it wasn't long before I was just hoping to make double digits on an exam (truth, not sarcastic). I made up my own extra credit questions. I wrote narrative answers for questions that required graphs to be made. Sometimes I just drew pictures for answers. Too bad creativity isn't encouraged in math class.

But then came a section in trig. For some crazy reason cotangents and sines made sense to me. I made an A on two tests in a row. People around me in class were failing their tests and I was really liking trig. I hoped that we would keep doing it for the rest of the semester...

And then we went back to regular boring advanced math. I folded my tests into oragami when I turned them in; Mrs. Campbell didn't like my attempts to get extra credit.

The last comprehensive exam of my last semester in high school was in advanced math. The few seniors in the class were taken to the library to finish our finals so that the GPAs could be tallied for graduation. I remember looking around the library and thinking of the Breakfast Club -- wondering what would pan out for those of us who didn't care a thing about advanced math. One guy folded his test into a paper airplane and flew it across the room.

The librarian wasn't impressed with our commitment to higher learning.

This class had done nothing for my GPA. But my ACT scores had really really gone up in math, and that was the important thing. I went to Mrs. Campbell and showed her what a good job she had done; she was as excited as I was.

I would never need trig again.