Last year, I started taking math classes again with an online teacher where we review the French high school 12th-grade curriculum, the scientific specialization. When I was in high school, a billion years ago, I picked economics. We obviously had math classes, but they were less advanced than the scientific path. At that time, I was already struggling with math since middle school. I crammed so hard to pass my math exam for my “baccalaureate,” and my efforts were rewarded. Against all odds and to my dad’s surprise, I passed with a good grade. But since I had struggled so much to pass, I have always felt like I didn’t deserve it, almost like a cheater.
Fast forward to today, and I am paying a math teacher to give me classes on top of my full-time job. Not to pass a grade, not to apply for a new job. Just pure insanity. Or rather for the following reasons:
First, I have never accepted the idea that I was inherently bad at math and that it was my destiny. Indeed, math was the topic I struggled the most with, but I didn’t feel hate for it. I knew mathematics were important skills to have and could be an interesting topic. I felt more frustration than just pure hate or disinterest.
Second, at my former job I was working with ML engineers, data scientists, and researchers, and I wanted to keep up with the conversations. Obviously, I knew just having a high school math level wouldn’t be enough to match their knowledge. But I was lacking the foundations to even understand their explanations when I asked questions.
Third reason: it’s the realization that math is everywhere. In programming, in my electronics projects, in cooking, in health… Math is even when I am sewing or learning foreign languages. I believe that understanding mathematics could also improve my learning of other topics.
Finally, I was craving regular intellectual challenges to maintain a healthy adult brain. I go to the gym almost daily to train my body. But I wasn’t doing anything for my brain. Corporate work is less and less challenging as I gain experience and with the spread of AI. It barely requires deep focus or hard problem-solving. I have quit a few jobs because I was bored. And obviously, like every millennial, I have filled my evenings with brain-rotting habits like social media and mindless scrolling. I feared that not training my brain like I do with my body will lead to future decay. Dr. Lisa Mosconi in one of her famous TED talks, said that one of the most important habits to prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia is to always keep learning. And this is what I am planning to do.
To be transparent, it has not been a smooth part so far. This is not your typical rags-to-riches blog article. I didn’t become a math genius. Occasionally, I canceled classes because I was too tired, lazy, or had too much work. Some sessions were very challenging either because I couldn’t maintain attention or I didn’t feel smart enough. Often I had to ask the teacher to repeat concepts that we had already seen in previous chapters. But despite not being the funniest hobby I have, I still enjoy it. Like when I go to work out, I always dread it at the beginning, struggle in the middle, wish I was somewhere else, and when it’s finished, I feel an immediate feeling of positive relief. I feel tired, but the good type of tired.
And I am always so happy when I notice mathematics concepts in other fields. Like that time, we were presented with an oscillator in the electronics workshop. I recognized the graphs that were showing cosine and sine lines.
My personal greatest achievement is to have inspired three of my friends, working in data, to pick up math again after I told them about my classes. We meet and chat as if we were in high school again. “Have you done your homework yet? No?! Sh*t, me neither.”
I am currently past halfway in the program. So far we went through arithmetic, functions, logic, statistics, probability, limits, derivatives, and trigonometry. There are still many chapters left to learn, and my pace is slow. I didn’t become a math genius, and I will never be one. But I am fine with it. As they say, it’s all about the journey.
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