Being the daughter of a mathematician, at the beginning of every year I could see the eager twinkle in my math teachers eyes, which seemed to say "finally the math brain I've been waiting to teach."
Oh, poor souls.
I believe this idea of career knowledge being passed down from parent to child is left over from the days when parents actually did teach their children their trade. Today in a world where you "can be anything you want to be--when you grow up," such transference of skill and experience is not passed on.
Don't misunderstand me; I was never horrible at math. I struggled in the beginning but once I mastered my times tables I was on the road to a consistent B+-A- math career. Yet, my teachers unspoken hopes' that I must share the same passion for math as my father really turned me off from the subject.
I'm of course interested in hearing what latest problem my dad is working on, or how math plays such a key role in the research Ben's doing. Percentages, I believe are the most important math skill I learned as I use it daily. But more than this, I really don't have much interaction with math. But something happened two days ago.
I was playing Scrabble with two friends and I had been keeping score. At the end of the game, I decided to challenge myself to add the scores in my head. The same feeling you get in your muscles when you walk after having driven for 7 hours and can almost hear your muscles thanking you...that's what my brain said when I added these numbers in my head. The annoying mantra "if you don't use it you loose it" streamed through my head. I realized I have not been exercising my math muscles. I thought of my dad, whose field is math, but who exercises his literature muscles all the time.
It has become clear to me that its time to dust off those weights and start getting the numeral workout I need.
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