School is getting out next week in my neck of the woods and my teenage clients, for the most part, are thrilled!  About a fourth of my client-base are teenagers and almost every one of them is most looking forward to not having to do math over the summer.  

Perhaps you know a teenage math-hater.  Perhaps you were a teenage math-hater.  

I have three things to tell you.

1. Parents have a tendency to make things worse when they try to help their own children with math.  It is a recipe for tears and drama.  You know I’m right on this.  
2. 98% of people (according to me) hit a wall in math somewhere between kindergarten and their senior year in college.  Something that was easy for them at some point becomes hard.  It happens to (almost) everyone. I promise.
3. Some of the 2% that don’t hit a wall in math decide to grow up and teach math and that’s why some (but definitely not all) math teachers suck at teaching it.  They don’t understand what it feels like to not ‘get’ math.  They’ve never not gotten it. 

Why am I telling you this?  Glad you asked. 

Let’s talk about that second one. 

I was at the end of my junior year in college when I, a math education major, hit my wall in math.  What had always come easy to me suddenly became very, very hard. 

And guess what I decided to do?  Bail. 

I don’t think it was the wrong decision. But the way I think about it now is very different than the way I thought about it then.  Back then I was pulling my hair out over a math class that was studying math foundation, congruences, quadratic reciprocity, unique factorization, prime distribution and Diophantine equations. Sound fun? It’s no wonder that I was enjoying my psychology classes SO much more.  

After venting about it to my then-boyfriend and calling my mom long-distance, I white-knuckled it through the rest of that course and then promptly switched my major to Psychology Education. I moved Math Education to my minor because doing this meant I was done with taking math classes.  Forever.

But I knew in my heart I’d taken the ‘easy’ way out.  

If I knew then what I know now, I would have asked myself some questions before I decided to be done. 

Anisa Purbasari Horton has 4 good ones.

1. Why did I pursue this in the first place?

“Every worthwhile endeavor will have its challenges and setbacks. In testing times, it can be easy to get fixated on how dire things are, and ignore why we pursued the [thing] or said yes… in the first place.”

2. Why do I feel the need to quit?

“We want to quit something when it makes us unhappy or uncomfortable. In addition to understanding why we took it on in the first place, figuring out why we are thinking of giving up makes it easier to decide what’s best.”

3. Have I done everything I can to make this work for me?

“Sometimes your frustrations might come from change, and the best thing to do in this instance is to embrace it. Other times, you’ve tried one method and didn’t succeed, so you need to try a different approach in order to get different (and better) results.”

4. What do I have to gain by quitting?

“Everything you do has an opportunity cost, whether you choose to do something or not. And sometimes, quitting something means you gain more resources to do something that’s more important to you.”

Ultimately, the decision to switch the focus of my undergrad degree led me to further study counseling and to my research in positive psychology, which landed me here.  But I gave up on something I truly loved learning about just because it was too hard.  And I still – all these years later – don’t like that reason. 

I can’t wait to hear about how you (and your teenager!) are deciding to not take the easy way out.  And if either of you need help answering some questions first, I’m your gal. 

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