(this makes me want to just faint and/or pee myself. h/t to collin anderson from flickr who used this as a test prep sheet. I hope they passed the test)
I have always been afraid of math, at least since I can remember being in school and failing terribly at it, constantly, and in each class I took, no matter what I tried.
Travel back in time with me.
I wound up in a wonderful and experiential grad school that did not require the GRE, which I had not taken because I was petrified of the math portion. But I mean…that’s ridiculous and because I didn’t take the GRE I was limited in my options.
I almost didn’t graduate college because I had ONE FLIPPING math class to take and I was just paralyzed. I wound up taking a very strange class from a strange man who explained things in a way that actually made sense and I wish I could have experienced that early on in my life.
I got physically sick during the SATs.
I have vivid recollections of my mother yelling at the 8th grade middle school counselor who was trying to put me into an advanced algebra class, when I hadn’t been able to get by with more than a D in pre-algebra. They needed bodies in that advanced class and by god if they had to sacrifice my mental health and self-esteem for so the class could make, so be it. I don’t know that I really ever saw her so mad?
(Which was embarrassing but also a great example of the power of a single individual going up against an uncaring bureaucracy for a loved one that I’d wind up replicating many times in my adult life. Go Barb!)
I also remember being in maybe 3rd grade at the beginning of the school year where they place you in reading and math groups. “Oooooh, she’s reading at a 6th grade level” and “Uuuuuh…she needs remedial math” were both told to again, my mother, while I was there? And I think I felt real shame for the first time even though I wasn’t quite sure what remedial meant, I just knew it wasn’t good.
I even have a very old report card from first grade because Barbara Gillis KEPT EVERYTHING I did and it reads on one line, “Talks too much to her neighbor.” Which, true, I was and still am a very chatty gal. And then also, “Needs support with numbers.” Also, still very true.
A whole lot of math shame goin’ on.
So it’s no wonder that with the way school worked in the 70’s and 80’s and the way the arts seemed EASY to me (because of how my brain worked), and because avoiding the shame of not understanding math, I’d go into theater and comedy!
(Actually, I know I went into theater because I had a composer and conductor father that my mother wanted me to emulate in some way and I really hated playing piano and oboe and I loved being onstage, likely because it was the only fun I had? Cause my mother was super depressed about a lot of things and our household was…whew…. anyway that’s a picture of me and Jason Vines doing improv back in the day-shot by Steve Rogers. It was a super fun show. Improv is the best.)
They didn’t test you for things like dyscalculia back when I was in school. You were just…not smart at math. So that became part of my identity, that I was not capable of math stuff. Dyscalculia is a disorder, like dyslexia, and can be worked around, through etc so that a person could accomplish things if they wanted to, which frankly I do.
But at the time? I just took the path of least resistance.
So, scrappy me, I took theater classes, then grew up, moved away and helped run a small theater in Seattle with a cooperative group of artists, helped support several small improv theater collectives with cooperative comedic artists, created a comedy festival that ran for six years in Austin (which was super fun but made no money because I was terrified of the whole concept of business because of MATH).
(Kerri Lendo and I looking over a packed house during one of the LAFF festivals we produced together. I look a proper businessy-producer don’t I? Kerri is fucking hilarious and I miss working with her. We had standup, improv and sketch and it was a fantastic time. Steve Rogers Photography)
I even was a co-producer and host of a locally successful storytelling show about sex, gender, and relationships and taught me the most about myself, in many ways.
What did all of these ventures have in common? They never really took off monetarily or nationally in the ways that they might could have-think like The Moth etc. Were they popular? YES! Did they feel cool and hip and fun and in the mix etc etc ? YES! Did they allow me to do just that for a living? NO! And that’s fine, right? Not everything in the world has to be monetized and squozen to death so that the work is not fun anymore.
Capitalism can make you feel like a sad mouse clown a lot of the time. So can math and business shame.
(roy moore photography, man I love this picture)
But also? Maybe it would have been cool to be able to earn a living at the thing I loved most out of all of the world, right? And to pay WELL the people who performed on our stages. In cases like these, you either get a business partner who KNOWS and loves money and numbers and the economic game of it, or you learn how to do it yourself. I didn’t really do either. All the folks I worked with and around did fine, so far as after-work ventures went (for bear in mind I was always working full time doing fundraising-work throughout ALL of this and was usually utterly conflicted about how to be “professional” when everything in me was screaming bohemian), and quite a bit of time we were able to pay performers (if not ourselves) at least a little something. I was always proud of that.
This October, maybe it was the intense astrology for people with Aries, Scorpio, and Taurus placements (TikTok kept telling me about it, I dunno), or maybe it was just a midlife wake up that I needed to start living into myself more fully and that included embracing that of which I am and was afraid, so here goes nothing, everything, a couple years of going back to school.
The MBA which I have yet to find out if I’m accepted. Maybe I won’t be!?
Regardless, I think education is the right path. I mean I could just take some goldarned Excel classes but I usually dive into things full-assed, if not half-cocked. Probably should reverse that? (There is a naughty podcast name in there…)
And maybe I’ll take a few classes and realize it isn’t for me, but I’m truly curious about learning the things that have sort of terrified me over the years. Things that if I’d paid a bit more attention to, perhaps I’d have more a place in the world I wanted to be in. And maybe at the very least I’ll come to the same conclusion about capitalism that I’ve held for a long time.
Besides all that, the MBA or not the MBA, I’m uncovering some deeper truths. If I’m really being honest here, my mother WAS really good at math and at business, at least until the dementia took her. And she took very good care of my father’s (artistic) business for he apparently was terrible at that part. By the time it was appropriate to teach me how to do and be all things business, he’d died and she was utterly lost.
Because I was a lot more like him naturally, she just pushed me straight towards the arts (and then oh all that family of origin stuff where you deny your mother in favor of your father blah blah blah) but I think that my shame with math is connected to that time period. To her? And to him. And to all of it. She took good care of me with her abilities in business, but because she never taught me how to do it myself for myself, it was always tangled up in the dark like a bunch of empty hangers in a brain-closet, locked away and hidden, and I’m only now figuring it out enough to do something about it.
If there’s anything I know about shame, it’s that it tells you lies, and is connected to power and control. I was in dire straits in a lot of ways during that time period, so what I learned to do was what came pretty naturally and what kept me out of real trouble, and gave me the ability to live through it all.
Heavy on Halloween, huh?
To lighten things up, I’ll share a word problem with you (I hated these the most I think because it was MATH disguised as words!!!!!!!!) I think the answer is perfect.
(erik fitzpatrick kindly provided creative commons licensing from flickr)
As always, if you get something good from these posts, feel free to let me know, share them, subscribe etc. And let me know what spooky things you are trying to grapple with in the comments! It’s Halloween after all and I want to know your darkest secrets. Unless we’ll both go to jail for it, then don’t want to know.
Happy Halloween everyone!
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t have to know everything. We need each other for exactly that reason. As you know, we floated in a similar space in Austin … leading but not making any money, but doing it anyway. I applaud what you have been and are being. An inspiration.
Love this. Love the mouse ears hug photo. Love the courage to step into your next chapter of learning. As someone who was really remediated in math (but who loves playing with concepts and ideas that are "math-ish"), I deeply relate to that shame and that identity piece. Thank you for writing this!
Also yay for improv! Have you ever plugged in with the Applied Improvisation Network? (https://www.appliedimprovisationnetwork.org/) I attended their online Open Space sessions each week for a year or so in a way that saved my mental health through the lockdowns. Great group of people with lots of experience and insight to share about how to make/fit improvisation into various careers and ways of having a positive impact on the world. I liked the Tuesday sessions so I could catch the European improv crowd!