Mathematics and Oddities

Fall quarter was... Interesting. This applies particularly to my Math course. The first evening, I was pleased to discover that a friend was in the class. She was the mother of a former preschool student and a nursing assistant that had cared for someone important to me. Knowing someone in your classes is a major relief. No matter how long I have been in school, the anxiety of starting new classes and being in a room of new people still hits. Sure, you may get to know your classmates and even become friends, but that takes time... It turned out having a friend in the class right from the start had unexpected benefits.

I have had quite a few professors over the last 2+ years, and each has his or her own quirks just like anybody else. One of the challenges you face as a student is to find a way to get your learning style and the professor's teaching style to work together. I always find this enjoyable. Sometimes your styles click right away, sometimes it takes a couple of weeks, and once in a while you finish out the quarter still scratching your head. This quarter of math class was one of those times. My friend, and apparently the rest of the class had a similar experience.

Our professor seemed to have a lot going on. This person was teaching classes at three local schools, raising kids, and (we were informed) was newly single. Could this have contributed to the oddities we students experienced? Perhaps. This professor was very kind, passionate about the subject, and seemed genuinely invested in student success. Nevertheless, I honestly cannot remember a single student, at any point in the quarter, who didn't look puzzled for the entire duration of every class.  I have spoken to other students who had this professor at different times, and none of them seemed to have been faced with this problem, but everyone in our class was at a loss. None of us clicked with the professor's style, none of us seemed to understand anything that was said in class, but most of us ended up doing well in spite of that.

My friend and I talked it over many times. We still cannot quite figure out what happened that quarter. We spent time discussing the work and helping each other out with different sections of work. That was one of the reasons we did fairly well and why I was glad to have a friend right at the beginning.

Every so often, I think back on Fall quarter, 2015. Every time I do, I feel my forehead furrow, my head tilt slightly to the side, and my brain fill with confusion. I still do not understand that professor's teaching style, nor do I understand fully how we all got through. But the fact is, we did.