Splendid Mayhem: Math Bologna

Welcome To Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Math Bologna

I'm not sure I can do it. Math, seriously scares me. How I made it through to the point I am now- I just don't really know. I am working on me review and discouraged. I want to drop this class. I could go to Isis and drop it this very moment. I will have to take it eventually. I'm just not motivated to do it now. I feel like a failure when I miss problems!

I know we've got bigger fish to fry. But, I can have my pity party over 16 weeks of mathematical hell. I'd rather be suffering in French again. At least there's a concrete answer/reason for that! I'm not ever going to need this crap again!

3 comments:

DawnFebruary 7, 2009 at 7:22 PM
Sorry you are struggling. I started off as a math major and quickly switched to a minor after calc nearly killed me. It's just so hard, but gosh I love math for the most part. Calc no good. Hope you survive. I liked Calc II & III so much I took it twice. Darned it!
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Ellen SeidmanFebruary 7, 2009 at 11:08 PM
I totally sympathize. I am amazingly dense when it comes to math. I aced English anything in high school, but struggled mightily with math, so much so that I was afraid it would destroy my chances of going to a good college. I pulled through, but my English scores were significantly higher than my math ones. Good luck!!!
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JustiFebruary 9, 2009 at 9:13 AM
I put the "Prayin' for Logen" blinkie on my blog! (((HUGS)))
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