Don't Know Much About...Math.

JENN McKINLAY: True confession time. I hate math. No, that’s not a strong enough word for it. I despise, loathe, and revile math, most especially algebra but, yeah, pretty much all the maths can fall into a hell mouth as far as I’m concerned and never rear their nitpicky, carry the one demon spawn heads again.

I don’t know why I have such an aversion, but I think I just don’t have a numbers brain. I’m cool with the functional math of balancing a check book, but the minute you get into X and Y I’m all, “Dear Algebra, please stop asking me to find your X. She is so over you and, no, I don’t know Y.” 

Give me literature, history, or even science any day of the week over math and I am all in. Hooligan 1, poor guy, takes after me and is doing some quality time in summer school, trying to muscle his math GPA into a higher bracket. It is ugly, and I feel for him. I really do, but I’m also super glad I can’t help him because…math. *shudder*

So, Reds, what was the subject you disliked the most in school? And if any of you say you loved them all, kindly back away from the keyboard and go sit in the principal’s office. Seriously.


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Here's the thing. I love math. I do. I think it is astonishing that it works, and that people can figure things out, like how far away a star is, and how many parking places will fit into a parking lot. It's gorgeous. It's reliable.  
I just don't understand how to do it. 
I mean--you should be in my office on the days my producer and I are trying to write our stories.  One of us will say: "Is it the big number into the little number? Or the little number into the big number?"  I have never been able to do 8-plus anything, with 8 plus five being the worst, seriously. Every time it has me counting on my fingers, or saying: 8 plus four is 12, plus one more.  
HOWEVER. If a sweater that's regularly priced $300.00 (or whatever) is on sale for WHATEVER percent off, I can totally figure that out.
Science, yes. History, yes (after someone showed me it was a story.) English, yes, passionately. Chemistry no--UNTIL the day I figured out how to do those chemical equations. I was in love. But you hardly ever have to use those. 
My FAVORITE math thing (and proof there IS an answer to "tell me how I am ever going to use this!"):  We were at a pizza place, 9 of us. We  had two pizzas to share. We said to the guy--can you cut them into 9 pieces instead of 8? 
Sure, he said.
SO HE CUT ONE OF THE EIGHTHS IN HALF!!
I am still laughing.

JENN: Pizza guy is clearly my people! LOL! And just because I had to go deeper into the art of cutting pizza - here's some pizza slicing for math lovers that will bend your brain (it's Hank's fault):

The Mirror: Perfect Way to Slice Pizza Revealed

HALLIE EPHRON: I love math, zoomed through with A's until I hit trigonometry and then...down the rabbit hole. But I came back to it as an adult and aced calculus. And my PhD is in educational measurement which takes you deep into statistics and multivariate analysis. Loved the part of the program.

JENN: I understood, like, two words out of that sentence, Hallie.

HALLIE: History is my nemesis. I can't remember names or dates or sequences. Dense blocks of text make me glaze over. I'd probably do better today at it, if I could LISTEN to the texts. And you'd think I'd have loved English but I took exactly one English class in college, required English 101 and when the professor said I needed remedial writing I was out of there. 

RHYS BOWEN: I don't think I have a mathematical brain. I am not good at Suduko, whereas a woman I know who I might describe as thick as a plank can race through it! However I was good at math in school. I didn't particularly like it but I got good grades. Geometry was my favorite. I am very visual and I could prove things I could see.  Hallie, I am so in awe that you did calculus as an adult!  
My least favorite subject was physics because we had a teacher who made it so boring. My son had a physics teacher who set them fabulous challenges...a car that could run the length of the 600 hall on the power of a mousetrap. That kind of thing. I can't tell you how many eggs were dropped off my balcony in the name of science!

Strangely enough I produced two children and now at least 4 grandchildren who are math whizzes. Sam is studying engineering at college, Lizzie did 4 years if engineering at high school. The twins both tested in the 99 th percentile nationally in math. And girl twin Mary Clare has just done high school geometry in a 4 week summer school so she can enter high school doing pre calculus! ( shudder). They don't get it from me! But like Hank I can calculate when it counts. I know exactly what my grocery bill will be, and how much my 30 percent off item will cost!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I am horrible at math. The woooorst. I don't know my times tables, and have to count everything up or down from five times (the only one I memorized.) I like to blame the gaping holes in my knowledge on the fact that I spent 2nd grad in three different schools in two different continents, but really, I think I'm just a numbers dud. The greatest day of my life was when I got a phone with a calculator app.

I enjoy reading popular accounts of hard science, although I found studying it (again, with the math) tedious. I am, of course, brilliant at English lit and history. Don't @ me, bro.

LUCY BURDETTE: I would say I’m in the middle of the Reds. I don’t hate math but on the other hand it’s not my best area either. I took calculus in high school, but realized quickly in college that I would have to work a lot harder than I was willing to. It was one of the classes I dropped as a freshman LOL. In graduate school, we had to pass statistics, and we had a very serious professor, who wouldn't have passed anyone on charm alone. We took the first test and I was pretty sure I flunked. Instead, I got the only A in the class. Very very mysterious – somehow my brain took over and did what was needed, though I did not understand it. 

So anyway, can you tell that we leave the math in this group to Hallie?

INGRID THOFT:  Just this morning I had a mini math crisis:  I was on the stair climber at the gym, and it asked me how many customized intervals I wanted to do rather than how many minutes.  What?!  I want to do ten minutes of two intervals, which aren’t of equal length, so you figure it out, fancy machine.  We were at a stand-off, as the step I was on slowly started to descend.  I took a stab at eight intervals, and I was right!  It was a math victory, which should indicate very clearly that I hate math.

I also hate chemistry with a loathing that can’t be overstated.  I took it in high school and required a tutor to get a half decent grade.  And to add insult to injury?  My father was a chemistry major at MIT!  Where did those genes go?  One of the delights of being a grown-up is that I never have to take chemistry again.  Ever.

HALLIE: Intervals? There were no intervals in Statistics, basic or advance or multivariate. (And PS, as you might guess, I love chemistry. SO logical. Very little to memorize.)

JENN: I hated Chemistry with a passion, but I did love my Chemistry teacher, Mr. Capazzi, who actually gave me a pass on charm 'cause it sure wasn't my grades that got me through. LOL.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have an algebra gap--this space where word problems and equations fall right through my brain. I'm fine with functional math, no problem balancing checkbooks (does anyone actually do that anymore?), I can figure a tip, or what something will cost if it's 40% off. But algebra is what made me drop out of high school, seriously. And even though I was a science major in college, I struggled horribly with chemistry and physics because of the equations. Weirdly enough, I aced business accounting in secretarial school, and statistics in college. I even did well in my Population Genetics course, which required loads of statistics. But do not ask me how many apples you would have if Johnny ran ten miles while losing an apple every three feet. 

Words and numbers do not belong together!

So, how about it, Readers? What school subject was the bane of your existence? 

My Favorite Teacher

INGRID THOFT

Pencils and notebooks and binders.  That's what I recently stumbled upon in the "seasonal" aisle of my local Target.  Is it really back-to-school season already?  I imagine it can't come soon enough for some parents, but it was a walk down memory lane for me rather than a not-too-distant goal!  I thought about my school days:  dissecting a fetal pig in science class; pieces of pizza that resembled floor tiles; field hockey drills wearing pinnies; and my favorite teacher.

Her name is Mrs. Harder, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that my favorite teacher was my English teacher.  Kind, thoughtful, and energetic, Mrs. Harder was the highlight of my academic day, and she will always be bonded in my mind with Edith Wharton and Shakespeare.  She fed my love of reading, and she taught how to write, which has clearly served me well.  More than that, in her classroom there were always lively discussions about bigger, more complex issues, which suggested she thought we were up for the challenge of beginning to tackle the adult world.  She taught us about values and integrity and the power we all have to choose the kind of people we want to be.  Grammar, punctuation, imagery, and ethics:  It was all on the agenda in Mrs. Harder's classroom.

These days, she insists I call her Joanne, which I still can't quite get used to, and she's one of my most enthusiastic and loyal fans.  She attends my Boston-area events, and last fall, invited me back to speak to the student body at my alma mater.  I feel enormously grateful that she was my teacher all those years ago, but I'm also thrilled that these days she's my friend.

How about you, Reds?  Who was your favorite teacher?  Were you in touch after your school days?

LUCY BURDETTE: Ingrid, you are so lucky to have your favorite teacher morph to fan and friend! Probably like the rest of you, I adored school and going back to school. I think my fave was Mrs. Covey in fifth grade. She was warm and interesting and made school fun. The details are fuzzy, and here's a story that tells more about me than her. Report cards came out and I had nothing but A's. Except for one B, which must have been given by the gym teacher. But my best friend Lynn had an A in gym. I went sobbing to Mrs. Covey, and she changed it to an A:). 

In high school, we had the most wonderful drama and choral music teachers, Mr. Schneider and Mr. Dorhout. I had very modest (almost minimal) talent in both of those subjects, but I was in love with the community they built and the seriousness with which they taught us and their great good humor and dedication. I still remember the alto harmonies from the choral pieces we sang...such a gift!

HALLIE EPHRON: My favorite teacher was in sixth grade, Barbara Ann Schenkel at El Rodeo school in Beverly Hills. She was lively, interesting, and she encouraged me to think for myself and say what I thought. Maybe it was because of her that I decided to go to Barnard College (she was an alum) and become a teacher. Sadly, by the time I tried to reach out to her (I'd moved to the East coast, was teaching education courses at the college level, had started a family...) it was too late. She'd died of breast cancer.

So my advice to everyone about your favorite teachers, if you want to reach out and tell them so, don't wait.

JENN MCKINLAY: I did not love school. In fact, if it weren't for my English teacher, Mr. Taylor, my science teacher, Mr. Meehan, and my favorite teacher, Mrs. Bodwell, I probably would have cut school a heck of a lot more than I did. Mrs. B was the choir teacher at East Lyme High School in CT, and I was lucky enough to be in choir, select choir, and her specially chosen group of eight for a small ensemble choir, where we were invited to perform as backup singers for a Broadway recording and in a gospel church in New London to name just a few of Mrs. B's field trips. Pretty much any cool gig she could throw us into, she did, and it was awesome. She was an amazingly talented woman who performed as a soprano in operas at the Met, but what I remember most about her was that she always wore four inch heels (she was on the small side of petite), kept her blonde hair in a neat bob, and had the biggest grin when she was conducting us from the podium. The woman was a live wire, and it was contagious!

We recently reconnected through social media. She's retired and living in Vermont, while I am in AZ. She still sings, I do not, but we both have a passion for knitting. We've been sharing our knitting adventures, and it's like rediscovering our friendship all over again. During my turbulent teen years, she was definitely one of the few teachers who saw past my tough exterior to the creativity inside of me, looking for an outlet. She taught me to be poised and confident, to pursue my passion wholeheartedly, and to push through failure and try, try, and try again until I got it right. I owe her so very much.

RHYS BOWEN: Like Jenn I did not adore school! I was very smart, always at the top of my class, but I was at an all girls school, and most of my teachers were close to retirement age--mean-spirited old spinsters who loved to criticize and inflict punishments. In sewing class, the teacher would walk around with a ruler and if our hands moved to the wrong position beside the sewing machine THWACK came the ruler over our knuckles!  I did like my music teacher and was also in the choir. We had a lovely young history teacher, but she got married and left. Great weeping and wailing. I didn't particularly like my sixth form English teacher, Miss Willis, but she helped to make me the writer I am. She challenged. She also mocked, I'm afraid, but she set creative assignments and a friend and I took those challenges, which resulted in my winning the English prize, editing the school magazine and being invited to tea with Arnot Robertson, a famous novelist, when she visited the school.

Oh, but college was a different matter.  I had some wonderful professors, especially for my thesis. She never taught. She would throw out seemingly unrelated questions, and then suddenly light would dawn, and we'd see the connection and go "Oh!". She wanted me to stay on and do my PhD, but I got lured away by the BBC. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Have you ever heard of a high school where the English teacher created a club, called The Hastings Club, and encouraged all his students to wear black armbands on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings to mourn the defeat of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans? I am thrilled to have a chance to once again honor the name of the fabulous Thomas Thornburg. I was just at my high school's 50th reunion, as you know, and every single person there mentioned how much Mr. Thornburg had changed their life. (He probably would have mentioned that my pronouns do not agree in the previous sentence.)

He was hilarious, and, hoping he doesn't read this, so incredibly cute, and brilliant--and I mean brilliant. He let us all love Shakespeare and Spenser and F Scott Fitzgerald and writing and poetry and the power of our own language and imagination. 

He was incredibly tough grading papers. He had a rubber stamp with the word GUG on it, which he would stamp on our papers when something was so indescribably terrible that he couldn't even manage to explain why it was so terrible.

I would not be where I am today (wherever that is) without him, and I have to say that so many people at the reunion said just the same thing.
The good news is he lives in Montana, and his wife and I are Facebook friends, and how cool is that? (I still imagine him looking just like this photo. And that's me and good pal Susan Palmer in the Hastings Club yearbook photo.)
I have used his name as a character in several of my books, just in honor of him...the books would not exist without him, you know?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: School was not a great experience for me once I hit middle-school, although I did have a very good and encouraging English teacher in tenth grade. But in elementary school, my best friend and I had the same teacher in third and sixth grade, Miss Schwann. I can't imagine what either of us would be like today without her. She was a wonderful teacher, kind and demanding and funny. She always let you know she had expectations, and you had better live up to them. She loved reading, and the half hour when she would read aloud to us was the high point at the end of every day. In sixth grade, she read us A WRINKLE IN TIME, and it was such an experience it has stuck with me ever since. I was a good reader before her classes, and a great (and addicted) reader after.

Here's the "Wrinkle" cover from my youth.  It cost $1.25!  

Tell us readers, who were your favorite teachers?  Do you stay in touch with them?