Academic subject you are bad at

[Elphaba09]

I remember her telling me that she walked into one of her math classes and the professor told them the first day that many people have to take his class twice

I hate professors like that. I had a psych professor who was like that. It was my only B throughout both my undergrad and graduate classes. He was such a jerk. He prided himself in saying that in his class a "B" was an "A." No. It is not. A "B" is a "B." Teachers and professors like that have no business education. To them, it is about their own egos, not other people's learning.

I had another professor who tried to give me a "B," but he and I had clashed several times during the semester--as had two of my friends--because he was sexist and had spoken to the dean. Apparently, he was a problem professor with tenure. Every time one of the women in the class answered a question, he said we were wrong and then, usually, went on to say the exact answer using different words. My friend--and friendly academic rival--wears hearing aids. He would jingle his keys in his pocket while standing next to her. (Nope, he did not jingle them in his other classes. He once went and got his keys off his desk so that he could jingle them!) She and I both went to the dean about our final paper grade and ended up having them regraded by three different professors because he had literally crossed off one grade and written another so that we would have a "B" as our final grade. Mine was a feminist deconstruction analysis of "The Goblin Market." Hers was a queer post-colonialistic analysis of "The Goblin Market." (We had six pieces of literature from which to choose, which is why we both did "The Goblin Market.") Both have been published in literary journals. We also graduated Summa Cum Laude with the same GPA.

 

[Winchester]

When I was admitted to college (a non-traditional student), one of the subjects I wanted to CLEP was College Algebra. The problem was that, since I had taken business in high school, I never had algebra. In order to get through College Algebra, I needed to get through HS algebra first.

It wasn't pretty. Our son was still living at home and he tried to help me. My best friend tried to help me. I just did not get it. All the x's and y's and word problems. My son would put his head on the table in frustration. "Mom, why is this so hard for you?" "I don't know!" I'd spent so much time in tears because I simply could not get it.

And then one night at work, a friend came over to my workstation. He saw what I was doing and we started talking. And within five minutes......BOOM! I got it. I don't know why it took so long. I don't know what was wrong with my brain up until that point. I came home the next morning, awakened my son (who was not amused) and said, "Got it! I got it!" He looked at me and said, "Fine! Glad to hear it!" rolled over, and went back to sleep. Me? I devoured that HS Algebra book. Our son was amazed. He gave me tests and I did fine. He got me through College Algebra and I passed the exam with flying colors. Turns out I loved Algebra! Who knew?

BTW, to CLEP a course meant that, instead of taking the course, you could test out of it. If you passed the test, you didn't need the course, but still got the credits. This was only for the general classes: history, chemistry, sociology, psychology, etc. And algebra. I couldn't CLEP out of any course that was in my major.

 

[misty8723]

Algebra was a book with seven seals for me, but luckily I haven't needed it since getting out of school ages and ages ago.

When I attended a 2 year tech school I decided I was going to take and Algebra class and do my best. To my surprise, I actually understood it and Aced the class. Don't ask me to figure anything out now tho, it's all gone with the wind.

 

[Willowy]

I was homeschooled (except for 2 years in public school) and basically didn't do any subject I didn't like. I loved grammar and spelling and stuff like that, although public school English was a bore. I liked math, I much prefer "real" math like accounting, but I enjoyed what little algebra I did.

My mom went to college, took college prep classes in HS, went all the way up to trigonometry before she decided that was all the math she could handle. But apparently something never clicked for her, she says she was just parroting whatever she memorized. So when we did math in homeschooling, she felt like she was learning it all for the first time. I remember one time I was just sitting around reading a book, I think I was 11 or 12, and she runs up to me and asks "do you understand pi r²?" I said "yeah, you measure across the circle, divide by 2, that's the radius, then times that by itself, then times that by pi, that's the area of the circle" (edited, sorry, I knew it then, it's been a while, lol), and she was all excited "how do you know that, I never understood that until now, that's so cool!" and ran off again, lol. We still tease her about her excitement over pi.

 

[AbbysMom]

Does history count? I learned what I had to pass my tests and then forgot a lot of it.