Last semester, I took a statistics class with the excuse that it was job-related.  The truth is, though, deep down I have always been in love with math and ashamed to admit it.  In high school and college, when one is required to make life-long decisions before one really knows what life-long should and could be, I chose the English direction rather than math.  I believed (wrongly) that this was an either/or choice.

But statistics opened a fissure.  Math is everywhere: Borges is all about math.  Badiou is all about math.  Libraries are all about math.  And that’s just the easy-to-list stuff.  So this semester, I formally declared myself a math major at the school where I teach, and I have enrolled in College Algebra.  This is my first math class since 1987*. I have to take another basic skills class after this, then four semesters of calculus, and THEN I can start the “real” math major classes.

I should have probably started with an even more elementary class, but my ego (and checkbook) didn’t want me to.  So only in week two, I am already struggling to keep up.  I am a terrible student.  This is going to be a long journey.

Someone suggested that I blog about it.  I don’t know who will want to read this, how often this topic has been done, or even what I will have to say.  But I think it’s a good idea.  I make my students blog and “reflect.”  So a little practicing of the preaching is in order.  Who knows what this might add up to (<- see what I did there?).

*Except for stats last semester, and a little foray into developmental math a few years ago.