If I haven’t mentioned it, I’m taking Developmental Math this summer. Because I decided the regular torture of my most hated subject would not be sufficient. 😒No, I needed an accelerated version that would cram an already condensed 4 month review of ALL the math an average person should have learned by adulthood into just 6 super short weeks. 🤪

Finding the most challenging and traumatic path for myself is one of my special talents. As Puck said in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’m happy to report that it hasn’t been all bad. I have an excellent teacher, who has been able to help me immensely, which is the only fathomable explanation for my current 92 average. And since he ONLY teaches during the summer session, I’m actually really glad I opted to brave the summer session. 😊

Still, the class has raised some suspicions in my mind that I would like to discuss. 🤔According to the description, this course was “designed for students who need to strengthen their mathematical background and will review topics covered by previous math classes, such as pre-algebra and algebra.” So, if I’m understanding this correctly, the things taught here would have been addressed by high school math teachers.

Well, since precious little of this information is the slightest bit familiar to me, I’ve arrived at three possible conclusions. Feel free to suggest your own, as well. 😁

1.) At some point following high school, I sustained a rather severe head injury that rendered virtually all of my math related memories inaccessible and no one has had the heart to tell me about the injury or investigate its effects on the lobe of my brain that controls my math comprehension; 2.) Unbeknownst to me, I was in a high school math class for differently abled students with special needs and people have been and continue to lie to me to protect my fragile ego; 3.) My high school math teacher was corrupt and accepted bribes in exchange for her agreement to teach lower level concepts, instead of the curriculum taught to students in other classes, in which case there are countless others out there who also haven’t the foggiest idea how to solve problems like this:

N= {-5, -4, 0, 6, 8}  O= {-4, 0, 8, 9} N  ∩O=

So, which one do you think it is? I’m also open to other theories. And, if you have similar theories about your own math deficiencies, message me. Thanks to my amazing teacher, I’ve recently learned how to solve the above equation. 😃