Let's talk about Math

So tonight I shall blog about this subject... Math.
In high school I was on the math team (right, Social Suicide according to Gretchen Weiner in Mean Girls) for four years. I dedicated one Saturday morning every month from the beginning of Sophomore year and about 300 hours total of workshop training in addition to practice on my own on Friday nights before meets. I gave up Tennis and Golf to spend more time indoors learning math techniques and teaching math techniques. Every time I had a workshop I would dread teaching it because teaching math to people is not realy exciting to me. Now that I think of it participating in the math team was one of those things that I just do because its easy to engage in a flow pattern with it, errr what i mean is that its easy for me to just keep going once I get the pattern. Doing pactice problems allowed me to memorize the pattern and the different shapes that itcan come in, allowing me to be ready for anything handed to me on the day of the Math Meet. I knew I was good at math when I was in second grade. The worksheets that my teacher handed out were super easy for me and I even remember requesting extra work because I didn't have anything to do at home. My MAT (a public school standardized test) scores showed that I had 6th grade level math skills in second grade. My teachers, my mom and my classmates kept telling me how "smart" I was. I remember my mom drilling me about the times table as well on the drive back to Ewa Beach from town. Every year my teachers and fellow classmates would tell me I have talent in math. I made friends by helping them on their homework and they liked me because they thought I was the smartest girl in the entire grade. In middle school I was able to skip Prealgebra in 8th grade and go straight to algebra. In high school I took math classes every summer to get ahead of everyone in my grade to further defend my title of being the Math Girl. By junior year I was taking AP Calculus and became co captain of the Math Team. I was on this weird Math Train and people all around me encouraged me to stay on it, so I did.

And then finally, along came college where I realized that Math is just a requirement that I have to fulfill for my engineering degree. I don't like it particularly. The college math classes that I've taken only have been interesting because my teacher was a flamboyantly gay guy and made quirky jokes. I spent hours on my homework and only after another hour of review before the class would I be able to comprehend the new lesson being taught. Currently I have one more math class to take for graduation requrements, and do not plan on taking it any time soon. Without the encouragement of my teachers and peers, I have no motivation to do math, which means in reality I may have been under an illusion all my life! I may have used my mathemtical ability to gain approval and praise from those around me. Rather than enjoying math itself I enjoyed the attention that I got when I excelled in it, or looked for other rewards such as recommendation letters from teachers. Well the point is that I don't know if I like math at all or if I just like the recognition. Or another possibility is that college is just harder and even subjects that I liked are harder.

So I feel like I rode this Math Train from 2nd grade till the end of high school. I never really thought about whether I enjoyed it or just did it cus ppl told me i was good at it. I wonder if I'd been told that I was good at writing at an early age, would I pursue English?