Feb 20, 2008

life is to be the strange...

i was taking a math quiz on facebook and was taken back to my sheer hatred of maths and the one quant prof who i'll r'ber for the rest of my life. and no, not in a good way. comic, maybe.. but not nice. so, i quit the app and came here to sulk on my space! :P

now, there's something about numbers that i've never quite got.
maybe it's the basic intelligence. or the fact that MY logic is not necessarily what anyone else sees as logical. even in school, when affronted with a question of computing d father's age, i'd stick to the safest answer and say "insufficient data" wherever the option was present! it was just taking the easy way out. of course, with age, i grew out of this habit *taking d easy way one* and now restrict it only to maths questions. also, i'd never be able to figure out any relation between those series of numbers to tell them what came next. that, to me, was like deciding between the chicken & the egg.

that given, a key reason for picking MICA *apart from a bunch of others* was d absence of quant. or that's what i believed. but as luck would have it, not only did we have quant, we also had a psycho prof! his english was completely out of this world. i think he also was painfully low on self esteem. his questions - non maths questions - would genuinely amuse & confound me simultaneously. how do u answer a question like "y d two of u are sitting on d backsides?" or "you are to thinking smart?" when he's trying to ask me if i thought i was too smart. well... painful. yes.

he also had something called "treaky quijhes" *surprise/tricky quizzes, in english* which i refused to tackle. he actually timed us, gave us separate papers *each paper had a different question*, so we wudn't copy and he did a frikkin countdown for the last 10 seconds!!! hello?! go get a life!! it was bad enough that he wanted us to solve the question in 3 minutes. i took that much time to understand what was asked!!! but the countdown completely ticked me off! heyy, i KNOW it's for 3 minutes...? STOP counting down when i'm just beginning to start solving this crap!
so i used to leave those tests blank. once, i walked up to him a minute after he'd barked out "start!", handed him a blank question paper and walked out. my intention was good. i cudn't figure out the problem, so wanted to avoid the pain of sitting there for 5 minutes not knowing what to do. of course, he had a legit question to ask me then... "how u will pass?" he asked me. and me - looking back, i think that was rather snooty - i nonchalantly told him "maybe, i won't!" and cat-walked out of a packed class. i have no clue where i got the cheek to do that from!

of course, i later got hell for that. he apparently complained to the powers that were that "d rayshma is thinking smart" so i was summoned to explain how i cud think smart.
yeah, i "managed" to scrape my way out of maths... initially, with the help of a few intelligent friends who took pity on me and finally, by sweet-talking people who mattered. u know, now that i think of it, it's amazing. the fact that everybody else was so much better at quant than me never really made me reconsider my own intelligence!! yeah, being stupid helps, i guess! also helps to not take anyone else or urself that seriously! but i digress.

and there ended my love-hate affair with numbers. *which means me loving to hate them* of course, i can work on ROI sheets & biz plans. but u always have excel & it's formulae to help u out! sure, those six months of feeling absolutely out of place in quant classes will neither be missed nor forgotten. but then such is life. memories are sometimes made of moments which u'd never want to relive again! strange, no!

11 comments:

Savani said...

lovely narration. I don't think I have a feel for numbers either. I am not terrible at it, but I am not exceptional either!

Preethi said...

I would have loved to see the expression on the prof's face as you walked out! :) So how did you fare on the one on face book.. post the results!! :)

plush said...

lol...i always tried to convince myself that i liked maths...not that it helped my scores..but..yea..

RADhika said...

:) good post... It's always good to see that i am not so alone in this club... :P

Suruchi said...

hey! nice one...i can almost imagine you telling the prof "maybe, i won't!"!
you are good with logic and numbers just help u see a secnario in a logical way(rather practical way) ...so u dnt really need to love them as long as u can interpret the situation logically.

Lavs said...

You must be utterly jobless to do maths quiz on face book. **Grin**
I had one such prof who used to talk only in Synonyms. And this classroom was the last one on the corridor. there used to be a water cooler behind that corridor and we used to wait there. Surprise quizzes used to be taken in the last ten mins and we would boldly walk in, do the quiz and go back to the water cooler.ha, those days! Sigh!

Pixie said...

Lovely narration! :-)
Read all your posts at one go!
LOL for the facebook buying and selling part!! :-)

Will take up the pending tags soon...

aMus said...

Now why were you taking a maths quiz in the first place...:D

sounds exactly what my son is going to do...the younger one...he's going to run out of fingers to count and will start using his toes...sigh...nobody ever told me when i signed up for mother hood, i have to be a professor in everything...

so dear...start brushing up and be ready for that umm...bright day of your life in the future...(i don't give up do i?) ;)

Pavi!!!! said...

I HATE math..Darn..why does it have to be sooo complicated? I can never get 5+8, without counting on my fingers!

rayshma said...

pavi: YAY! i have company! :)

suma: hehe! i accidentally clicked on d math quiz! :D
and umm... BEFORE i think of having a kid, i'm gonna draft an MoU... and have Vin sign it. basically, it'll list everything that wud be his responsibility. :D of course, that wud include teaching d kid! :D hehehe...!

pix: whenever u find the time, gurl... take care... :)

lavs: my joblessness is a touchy topic... hehee... yeah, college days were fun, weren't they...:)

suruchi: MUAH! love u! u know, seriously... he really pushed it! i used to be nice & respectful of profs before he traipsed in...

radhika: welcome aboard... and thanks! feel free to join d club! :)

plush: u know self-hypnosis, babes?! :D

preethi: i didn't complete the facebook one. the first question was one of those number series... HAHAHA...!!

dotmom: if u're okay at numbers, u're still WAAYY better than i am! :))

Sarfraaz Ahmed said...

memories are sometimes made of moments which u'd never want to relive again! .. completely agree with this

It have never understood how someone could not like numbers ! sigh !

btw ... is the below statement right ?
"first label on this post" = "name of math prof" ;-)