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I have bad memories of college freshman Algebra. The prof would chicken scratch the first few variables on the board, get sidetracked, and leave us to wonder what the heck came next. Students, young and old, were dropping the class like flies. Those who didn't bail out before the cut off date merely signed their names to the final and turned it in blank. Two things got me through the course with a B: 1) I'd already complained to the head of the department and 2) I was dating the prof's pet who was a math whiz.

"I have bad memories of college freshman Algebra. The prof would chicken scratch the first few variables on the board..."

OK...that would have been frightening but... here's another of my math horror stories from College: I took a "Self Directed" Calculus class. It was a "move at your own pace course, where you'd study on your own then come in on Fridays to sit for the weekly test that covered whatever calculus module you had been studying. That wasn't so bad. The worse part of it is the university had hired Teaching Assistants (TAs), to be available during the week so you could come in and receive some one-on-one tutoring. The only problem was that all of the TAs were CHINESE grad students who's English sucked.

Now, try to imagine my situation: I hate math to begin with. I struggled with Math all through high school. Now I'm in college taking calculus on my own and not understanding very much of it at all. I go into see the TAs who can't speak English, and they proceed to try and "educate" me on some incomprehensible aspect of Calc in broken English...you get the picture.

The good news is that I stuck it out for all 16 weeks that semester and pulled a "B". The bad news is that to this day the sum total of all the calculus I know and understand would comfortably fit inside of a thimble.

Actually, it was our college class that began a student rebellion at the university to make sure the Math Department hired TA's who could speak English. That was many years ago. Both of my kids have gone (or are going to now), the same university and I understand that potential TA's now have to pass the TOEFL exam before being allowed to teach....thank God.

Sounds like my high school Trig class. The teacher was perhaps the worst instructor I've ever had at any level, and I went on to spend 10 years after high school getting a BA, MS, and PhD. At the beginning of the school year there were about 30 students in the class. By the time I'd had enough and dropped the course with a D- in December, the class was down to 22. Of those 22 remaining, 10 had a D or an F. This was supposedly one of the best high schools in the state (PA), so I honestly don't know how this woman was allowed to continue teaching this class year after year with such dismal outcomes.

Anyway, I never took math again beyond the requisite stats courses. I am perhaps the only PhD in existence who has never taken calculus at any level. I've never once needed it.