I’m no good at Math. I have horrible memories of math within my lifetime as a student. There are those tears generated by trigonometry (and a teacher whose surname in English means “choosy”) to a failing grade because I forgot the date of the finals of my mathematical methods subject. There were instructors with terrible and terrifying reputations; Math teachers who inevitably gives failing marks to half of the class (or worst, 3/4 of the class); and those who love the blackboards so much, they don’t bother looking at their students.

There are two vivid memories that always comes to mind when I think of Math.

Grade VI. Our math teacher was holding a demonstration for some other teachers from the division. It was the application time of the lesson, after the lecture, where we were asked to answer several problems. If we were done, we had to go in front, and check our work; the answers were written on a movable blackboard, its back on us.

So there I was, pretending to be answering the problems, when this teacher was nosy enough to look at my work. And since I was just doodling, I was troubled enough to cover it, as if she was a desperate classmate who wanted to copy my answers. Embarrased, I stood up and went to the blackboard, pretending that I was done with the problems. So much for honesty.

A decade later, I was in college already, and I had this subject called statistics. We had this quiz about permutation, combination, and probability. So there was this problem involving the seven dwarves. Yeah, Snow White’s seven dwarves. Basically the problem was how much work would Sleepy do if the others were doing this and that number. I was stumped by the numbers, so I answered: “None, because he is too sleepy to do anything.”

Too bad the teacher did not even appreciate the humor. Unlike this one:

Do you have any memorable Math subject experience?