Midpoint Cumulative Summary

Trey Johnson

Georgia State University

My experiences in math haven’t always been the greatest. It’s the one subject that I’ve always struggled in and to this day still try to avoid. Since I’ve been in college I’ve taken business calculus three times in the last two years, THREE TIMES! And i still have yet to pass it. Is there such a thing as a math phobia? Because if so I definitely have it. Math would honestly be so easy if teachers would just show you the easiest and most simplified way of solving a problem and not fry our brains with so many different formulas for the same problem! I’ve honestly never gotten anything over a C in math since being in school. I’ve gotten more D’s than C’s and I think one F but you get the point. Me and math will never see eye to eye, and I’m okay with that. Less brain trauma on my end.

I have honestly never cared to be a teacher. I always believed that teachers don’t get paid enough to deal with what they deal with, like seriously. Kids are terrible people, our goal was to learn and make the teachers day harder than it needed to be, at least that’s what it felt like. I’ve gone to 6 different high schools and man the difference in education and what the teachers go through is insane. I went to school in south central LA all the way up until my sophomore year in high school. When I tell you teachers were not safe, I mean it. Teachers were getting bullied left and right. My eighth grade teacher got so fed up with our class he just never tried teaching us, he would literally just come to class and let us do whatever until the class was over because the students tortured him and never let him get any teaching out. We’d spit spit balls at each other, try to stick wet paper or tissue to the ceiling, play with our game boys or psp’s (PlayStation portable), we did everything you could possibly think We’d get away with because our teacher refused to teach. He didn’t refuse to teach because he was a terrible teacher, he just couldn’t get the chance to teach because of how terrible of students we all were. I’ve seen so many situations even in high school where the teachers were dang near bullied everyday to where they’d refuse to teach and wouldn’t care about what goes on in the class or students. The Los Angeles unified school district is a tough place to teach in, only the strong survive. The schools I’ve been to outside of Los Angeles were easier for the teachers, the students were far more obedient and wouldn’t dare to do the things they would do at my previous school. I just so happened to be the kid who always acted a fool through high school, nothing crazy just the class clown trying to always be funny.

I really can’t even think of any positive experiences in math or English. I feel like the only positive things I could possibly think of is the excitement I get when I actually understand something. I literally feel like a genius when I’m finally understanding this foreign language the teacher speaks. It’s like the best feeling, you get a math or science high and just excited to see what else you can do. The con of every high is there is always a downfall, that high runs out. It never fails every time I’m finally understanding something and then I get home to do my homework and the math problems are nothing like what I did in class. So then I just sit there staring at the problem like it’s going to blink first, mind beyond fried and then I come back to reality “I hate math”. Science is something else, there are so many good experiences I’ve had in science but that’s only if there is no math included. Once math gets involved just throw the whole subject away, I don’t want it. I absolutely hate chemistry, before I was a business marketing major my major was dental hygiene. I was taking chemistry over the winter break and this class was whooping my butt I didn’t understand anything that was going on. It was so bad that I dropped the class a couple weeks in and changed my major that same month, and now I am here prospering.