The more I work with mathematics, the more entranced I am by how everything works together. I’m trying to decipher and understand conic sections, only to find a little bit of the quadratic hiding amidst all the formulas. I had no idea this stuff could be so beautiful.

I know, I know, many of you are thinking oxymoron, and at one time I would have so agreed with you. Geometry was a killer in high school, and I still fear proofs….even though I tend to be a pretty linear person, very concrete – I have grown so over the years in being able to use more parts of my brain! Yet now I look at the geometry and am amazed at how little information you actually need to make sense of so many practical problems. 90, 180, 360 – basic degree measurements needed, knowing what happens with angles and parallel lines – you can now do so many different computations.

In one day less than three weeks, I face my biggest math challenge ever – I am taking the high school math qualifying test, because according to the Bushies, I am not highly qualified to teach algebra without proving it through this test. Here’s the kicker – all my math knowledge now is pretty much self-taught. I never had any of those required courses. So I am teaching myself yet again all I hopefully will need to be able to do. And….

…I’m loving it! I look at something that seems so foreign, find a little piece that looks familiar to what I already know, and work from there. I have “ah-ha” moments all the time…so that’s why that works, and so on.

“Course, I still dream that the first thing Obama does on January 20th is repeal all the testing we have to do to be highly qualified and make it effective immediately. The $130 I would lose would be so worth it!