Absolute Numbers

I'm taking Math 10. I need to take statistics to graduate with a BA in psychology and since I haven't taken a math class since the Clinton administration I'm forced to start with Math 10. Math 10 is the lowest math class that my university has to offer. After that I have to take Math 11 and Math 12, get a C or better and then I'll be given the blessing to take statistics. That's a whole year of math. When I planned out my last year or so of school I didn't plan on taking a year of math. I thought I'd take the math placement and maybe I'd get into Math 12 or at the worst Math 11. Nope. Math 10. This extra year is another casualty of my oddly high, and usually proven unwarranted, self-confidence in my abilities.*

Our first lesson was fractions. Fractions. I had to re-learn how to multiply, divide, add and subtract fractions. Its okay, I like fractions. Yet it's humiliating in a chick-lit heroine kind of way. Bridget Jones goes back to school; watch her make a fool out of herself! The positive aspect of this is that I have learned to sustain a quiet dignity that keeps me from weeping into my pillow and pulling the covers over my head forever.

What keeps me doing this is that I'm determined to follow this path as long as it takes me to get where I want to go. I haven't felt this way since I was a born-again Christian determined to do God's will. There was an indescribable force that compelled me forward, a belief in what my purpose was, when I was Christian that kept me moving forward. I'm an atheist so I don't believe that force is God rather I think that, like Dorothy's ruby slippers, I had the power the whole time.

But damn, couldn't I have figured this out ten years ago? Really, I didn't have to go through all those years of aimlessness in the theater department, be fired a shitload of times, or move back in with my parents...that was kinda overkill, ya know?





*I also tend to pile unusually high amounts of food on my plate at buffets, turn my first workout in six months into a two hour long session of running, biking and weight training, and plan a complete three room overhaul in one Saturday afternoon.