As I get closer to being just one semester away from graduation, I’m both worried and fearful.
It is not the fear of becoming a part of society and applying for jobs that will likely shape my career and future. It is a fear of not receiving my degree at all. And not because I didn’t attend my classes or didn’t get placed on the dean’s list more than once, but because I am not a good math student. Period.
Now many may say that math can be learned and it can be applied if you put 100 percent of your effort into it, but let’s be real. Who has time as a college student to learn something that, for some of us, might be more difficult than learning a foreign language?
In grade school and even part of high school I can understand why you would need mathematics. But once you get to college and pick a major that has nothing to do with math, the culmination of your entire two to four years of studying, through stress, sweat and tears, should not come down to earning a C or better in a general education requirement.
Most math classes do not help many of us in meeting our respective career and life goals.
I believe that if a certain type of math is necessary for what you want to go forward with in life, then by all means you should be afforded the opportunity to take as many mathematics classes as needed to reach that level.
But for students like me, whose majors may be in the arts, entertainment and written language, taking two or more semesters of math is simply a hassle.
I don’t understand why me knowing how to solve 2x+4z= x should be a requirement to earn my degree, when I have aced all of my speech, English and journalism courses that pertain to my future. These courses are what will lead me in the direction I am headed.
I am not saying this just because I am not a good math student, but because I have friends who have had to stay an extra year at universities because they did not reach what the institution requires as the “proper” math level, which is Statistics, in order to receive a bachelor’s degree.
I wonder why I am doing all of this hard work if the status of my degree will be judged by my struggle in math.
Colleges will bypass all your hard work and effort because you did not succeed in a course you may not even need in the future. I understand it is expected for students to be well rounded, but by the time you enter college you have already been in school most of your life and, for those returning to college as adults, you most likely have been out in the real world working, raising children and just living day-to-day.
In all, it really saddens me that a lot of my hard work, and many other people’s too, will come down to something I have never really understood.
I plan to never see a math course after college.