2 + 2 = Math Sucks

Guess what? Math is hard.

I was going to keep this a secret in case it all ended horribly, but I am approximately 77% likely going to be applying for graduate school this year. I've always had the intent of getting my Masters - in fact, every year since graduating from college I've seriously thought about it. Right after college I was going to go to law school, so I bought an LSAT book and barely touched it. After my first year as a teacher, I was going to maybe get a Masters in Education so I researched a bunch of schools then did nothing about that. After my second year of teaching, I was definitely NOT getting my Masters in Education, but now I was going to study public policy in order to create more "systemic change" (brainwashed). After working in recruitment and speaking to college seniors on a daily basis, I was dead set on not going to graduate school given the crop of losers who insisted on going without knowing why (my future classmates?). Then after a year of Peace Corps service, I was back on the public policy track, but this time on an international level.

Well, I've sort of made a compromise now tying together all of those "almost applied" ideas. I'm seriously looking into programs in international education - it combines my experience and my passion and I think it's something that has a viable output that I would thoroughly enjoy while continuing to make a difference.

Now, any almost/would-be graduate school applicant knows that in order to get into grad school, you need to take the GRE... which brings me back to my initial thought: Guess what? Math is hard.

Either I'm an absolute idiot or somehow I missed the train on how to learn mathematic principles above the elementary level. Don't get me wrong, I am an AWESOME sixth grade mathematician (after all, I did once teach it); however, it turns out that a lot of the math on the GRE is kind of more advanced than what a normal 12-year-old knows. Bummer. (I just want to give a quick shout out to Mrs. Gillis, my 10th grade Geometry teacher, who instead of ever teaching me anything worthwhile, sat on her fat ass "grading papers" - it's because of your overly pancaked face and hairspray-freezed frontal mullet that I never learned anything useful involving angles or intersecting lines. Thanks!)

My brain has never really been able to get around mathematical concepts at a high level and now since I am pretty much forcing myself to do this, my brain sort of hurts a lot. Sometimes I catch myself staring at a sample problem in my GRE "success guide" and then five minutes later, catch myself again still staring at it. Usually I'm thinking about sailing or ice cream or how expensive those comfy chairs in Barnes and Noble are and where I can get one. Basically, anything but math.

It is a necessary evil though, I suppose, and that's really the only way I can justify studying all of this nonsense. It's a hurdle that, regardless of how I feel about its relevance, I need to get over. So, it's back to Pre-Calculus in Nutshell and Math the Easy Way, in addtion to many other titles.

I hope the verbal's easy.