Mrs. Taylor was right

By Staff
Scot Beard
Monday night I had a horrible flashback to my middle school years.
I found myself sitting in the small, cramped desk that was barely big enough to hold my notebook and textbook as my math teacher went though a refresher during the first few weeks of school.
The chalkboard was covered with fractions.
Some were to be added; others waited to be multiplied. Many of them were anticipating conversion to decimal format.
Above the confusion rose the voice of my math teacher, Mrs. Taylor.
"Come on class, pay attention," she said. "You will need to know this to get by in life."
It has been 16 years since I heard those words. Until recently, I thought they were just one of the things lost to history.
I was wrong.
Math was never one of my favorite subjects in school. As a result, I learned what I needed in order to pass my tests, but I let quite a bit of it fall to the side.
I can add, subtract, multiply and divide without much trouble. I remember most of my basic algebra and a pretty good amount of geometry.
By the time I was in high school, however, I knew I was not going to be a rocket scientist, so I did not pay much attention in trigonometry or calculus.
In fact, the two subjects I liked least in school were math and English, which is ironic – see, I did pay a little bit of attention – considering I now make my living as a sportswriter.
Fast-forward 11 years after I graduated high school and Mrs. Taylor's words are ringing in my ears.
My wife, Erin, is returning to school to earn her Bachelor's degree in nursing. This semester she is taking a course titled "Dosage Calculations" – which I think is something good for nurses to know.
She does not like math either, so I told her I would help tutor her to the best of my abilities. It is basically the four main components of mathematics – adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying – how hard could it be?
I found out Monday.
I walked in to the house as she was practicing some problems in the first chapter and I knew I was in over my head. While I knew the basic components of math, I had forgotten how to apply them to fractions.
These weren't easy fractions either. If it had been 1/2 plus 3/4, then I could have aced it. Instead they wanted to divide 175/495 by 2/7.
I could solve the problem with the use of a handy little invention called a calculator, but Erin said they were banned from the first test.
I glanced at the page in horror. Erin said, "Fractions are of the Devil."
I don't know if the Devil devised fractions or not, but I now realize Mrs. Taylor was right.
Maybe that is why I disliked middle school math so much – the teacher was always right.