In the past four years, I’ve taken 35 different classes, spent approximately 776 days in school and cried upwards of 100,000 tears over due dates, boys and the inevitable friendship drama. After spewing out all of these statistics, one might begin to believe that I am actually good at stats. The cold, hard truth, however, lies in the AP stats column of my Powerschool account, which tells the true terror of my skills as a statistician.

To say that I hate math classes is a dramatic and false assumption. I absolutely love the people in my AP Stats class. We often tell each other funny stories and create inside jokes among ourselves. I get to sit close to some of my best friends, and it makes the day much more enjoyable. Mrs. Brace deserves an award in patience for dealing with our class’s outbursts and antics on a daily basis.

As much as I love the people in the desks surrounding me, I cannot seem to keep my focus on the information in front of me. I’ve never been a math person. I would rather compile 10 college writing portfolios in a row than take one math test. Writing comes easily to me, and while I’m far from perfect at it, I know that it’s one of my stronger skills. Math, on the other hand, is about as easy to me as rocket science.

In elementary school, when only numbers were involved, math wasn’t so bad. But, after math started to become symbols, letters and formulas, I mentally checked out very quickly. I commend anyone who has the ability to memorize formulas and processes with ease. For me, however, test days will always be preceded with tears and followed with uneasy feelings about my answers.

The truth I must swallow is that my days in math classes will only continue in college and beyond. So, while I’m almost off the hook for the summer, I’ll be frantically humming the quadratic formula song again when fall rolls around.