Binomials, Pemdas and Quantitative Comparisons Oh My!

For those of you returning to school next week after several months of vacation and now worried that you will not be able to get back into the groove of math, English and science . . . I have absolutely NO pity for you.

Because I am too busy pitying myself.

After 10 years of not doing any math more difficult than balancing my checkbook, calculating a simple percentage or measuring a room for carpet and paint . . .I am taking the GRE.

Now the GRE assumes (wrongly) that you have just finished four years of math and English and are ready for a comprehensive exam to show your knowledge. This may be true for most, but there is a small percentage of us that actually went out of the halls of academia and worked in the world for several years before deciding to go back to school. And that nonsence about "it is like riding a bike, once you learn it it stays with you forever" is utter, complete and WHOLE nonsense.

I used to make A's in Advanced Math in high school and at University. I learned my formulas and equations like a good student, passed my exams and went on from there. My work never required these skills of me so they got dusty, then they got rusty, then they corroded and now all thats left is some vague shadowy mess in the far regions of my brain where all I can really remember about my Advanced Math, Geometry and Algebra classes is where I sat and that my alegebra professor at Tech was a raging Arkansas Hogs fan.

So, I have to take this GRE before going back to school. Doesn't matter that what I am planning on studying will not be using Geometry, Algebra and such.

The English and Composition parts of the GRE don't bother me at all. Those skills have been kept sharp from constant use in my work and in the fact that I enjoy reading.

Have you ever had a dream where you were taking a test you know you studied for but everything has escaped you? (or perhaps this has happened to you in real life - so much the worse!) Well, as I took my "Let's see how you do on this practice GRE so we can tell you what to brush up on before the actual GRE" test, I felt this way. I kept staring at problems and thinking, "Hey I know how to do these! Don't I? I used to know the formula. Wait, it will come to me, surely all those years of study were not in vain. . . surely. . ." Well, the score, was pretty sad. The English section was very good. But the Quantitative section was very very bad.

So, I have set down a study plan of 1 hour every day reviewing my pitiful maths. I would rather have root canal work done. I keep telling myself that, "These are important skills to maintain, you need this knowledge in your everyday life" but in actuallity I don't. I have gotten by in the last ten years quite well without them, thank-you and I will not be using them in my advanced studies at university either since my chosen field of study is not concentrating in maths.

So here I grind, on a Saturday morning, when I'd rather be watching a movie, reading a book, washing my truck, running errands, scrubbing out the horse trailer, whatever. . . anything but multiplying binomials or finding the distance between two points or finding out how long it will take Mary to get to Florida from Louisiana if the current is such and such and the wind direction is this and that.

ugh.

(and I do pity you my friends returning to high school and junior high. . .not so much because of having to return to the books, but because the Louisiana public education system never seems to get the air conditioning working until mid-September.)