On Being Bad At Math

Insecurity numero uno

(Later edit: I wasn’t originally going to post this, because it’s a bit embarrassing and more personal than the sorts of things I usually write. But I think generally people should take risks and be willing to write embarrassing things, so in the spirit of that, here it is, unedited, just an unfiltered stream of consciousness).

I’m bad at math.

Of course, when you say you’re bad at math, everyone doubts it. They devolve to communist-level math denialism, saying things like “well, maybe you didn’t have a good teacher,” or “real math has never been tried,” or “math requires hard work, but with enough work, anyone can figure it out.” But these things are all false, I really am bad at math.

I’m bad at math in the same sense I’m bad at learning foreign languages. Sure, I can figure it out with enough work, but it takes immense difficulty. Math was always the subject I found most difficult in school (with the exception of foreign language), I felt consistently like I didn’t really get it (at least, after ninth grade) and that I was just going through the motions.