What Grade 10 Math Taught Me

The other day, I did guest lecture at my Alma mater university; it’s become a seasonal tradition. The professor invites me to her statistics course to give an industry lecture to a class of engineering students. I talk to them about statistics and how I apply it in my job.

Whenever I go to do these classes, I can’t help but be a bit bemused and puzzled. Here I am providing a lecture to an engineering class… it seems so unreal.

The reason it feels unreal is because I don’t consider myself exceptional at statistics, math or science. In fact, I used to have a quite negative self-image when it came to math and sciences, especially math. One event that contributed heavily to this was my grade 10 math class.

Back then, I wasn’t a serious student. I skipped class a lot. The main reason was really insecurity – I was scared to try and pretended to be a bad boy. And when it came to math, I was especially bad. I never studied. I barely passed grade 9 math.

However, in grade 10, I decided to actually try. Over a couple of weeks I started asking the teacher questions, trying to do homework and actually study for the upcoming test. I was quite optimistic when I took the test – I was thinking I would get a B.

Then came the day we got the test back – a D minus stared back at me.

I was shocked.

With hindsight, I was being a bit unrealistic about how quickly I could improve. It’s like I decided to do a 20-minute jog the night before and then somehow thought I would run a marathon really well the next day. It was the right direction, I just needed to be patient.

Unfortunately, the teacher just made the situation worse. He got up to the front of the class to discuss the test and how everyone fared. And he singled me out.

I forgot exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of:

“Most people did well or okay but there were some people who did poorly and made stupid mistakes like this…”

He then put up an incorrect answer I had made on the blackboard. I heard peals of laughter erupt in the class room. He continued:

“I guess some people weren’t as good as I thought.”

I was absolutely mortified. And all I can remember thinking was…

“Obviously I can’t do math.”

Why my math teacher did this, I was not sure. I don’t think he was necessarily a mean teacher. Maybe it was just an inappropriate attempt to motivate me. Regardless, the end result was I gave up trying in math. I passed grade 10 math but never bothered to do any other math or science courses. For the next 17 years I took it was gospel that I was not a math or science person and that I could never be.

Life has strange twists though.

In my late 20s and early 30s I went through a tough time – a long-term relationship broke up and I decided to transition from my career at the time. I was lost and unsure of what to do.

I decided to apply for architecture school and realized I needed to do those math courses I never did in high school. I was also kind of curious to learn about math again, since I knew so little. So I did all the maths and sciences by correspondence.

As a backup, I decided to also apply to engineering school, got accepted into engineering and then decided to attend engineering.

I was certainly not a phenom when it came to math and science, but with commitment, patience and lots of failure, I got my engineering degree and found a job as a data analyst.

So, you might be asking yourself, “what does this long-winded story have to do with my better future?”

Better futures can sometimes seem far away and remote. They can be so remote that we can’t even contemplate the possibility.

But they exist.

They don’t always come easy.

They don’t always come when we want.

But they come.

You may not be able to be anything you want or do everything. However, I truly believe that all of us have the capability to do what we think is impossible.

If you told that humiliated 15-year old kid in that grade math 10 class that day (or even 15 years later), that in the future he would have an engineer degree from an excellent university and be doing guest lectures at engineering classes, you might as well have told him that the moon was made of cheese – he would have believed it about as much.

And yet, here I am.

Maybe what you want seems really out of reach – maybe it seems futile to try and pay down the debt, change to a higher paying job, or learn that new language.

But I assure you, if you keep at it, no matter how small the steps, how insignificant the progess seems, you can still achieve results that you could not imagine (just don’t expect it to happen overnight).

It took 25 years to learn the lesson, but that’s what grade 10 math really taught me.