math is hard

I thought I had my math phobia licked when I passed my continuing education refresher in algebra and trig a couple of summers ago (I knew I could do it when it no longer made me cry). Not so. The math phobia resurfaced today as I was trying to explain my lack of progress on a project to my underboss. My underboss is one of the most intelligent people I ever worked for. There's no bamboozling her with Barbie-like claims that math is hard. The great shame of it all is that I am having trouble making charts in excel. Excel was mine. I had mastery, I swear, but this project has me reduced to dingbat again. I couldn't see the logic in it. I had to...ask for help...from a...business school student. He's the sweetest kid, really, so it wasn't that bad. He even admitted that the task wasn't very logical to begin with. But when this IT guy came by and asked what we were working on and started giving his two cents... I was about to lose it.

If anything, math and logic are supposed to be free from emotional entanglement. Yet for me, they form another treacherous swamp of shame and frustration, filled with thorny vines of sexism and nasty sibling rivalry gators lurking and waiting to take a chunk out of me. I hear the voice of my high school teacher, "You're not stupid. You're lazy!" That was inspiring. Yeah, he was a regular Jaime A. Escalante, that guy.

I just have to remember what my friend said about math. At the time I didn't believe her, but it's true. Eventually, I will find the answer.