Conquering fear
Fear is an emotion with which most of us are familiar. Fear of trying something new, fear of failing, fear of “putting ourselves out there,” and even fear of success!
Like most people, I definitely feel fear. I feel trepidation about what will happen as my kids grow up, concerns about my aging parents, fear of the unknown as I’m working on a pretty significant career change, fear of tackling personal issues in my life and…a fear of math! Yes, you heard that right. I am a certified “math phobe.”
The reason I mention my math phobia is because I walked into my first college Trigonometry class today. Why Trig, at my age, you ask? Well, the community college system at which I’m taking my pre-requisites for my health care master’s degree (more on that later) has upped their requirements for entry into General Chemistry. They used to just require college algebra, but I guess too many students were failing out of Gen Chem, due to the math involved, so they upped the math pre-requisite to Trigonometry! I could drive about 35 miles to another district that doesn’t have this requirement, and while that’s an option, I’m examining just why I am so afraid to take this class.
Math has always been a stumbling block for me. I remember being pretty good at math until I encountered long division at the tender age of 8. That was it – from then on out, math has inspired terror in my heart. I plugged away at it through school, and even got into Honors Algebra and Geometry, but I stopped before Trig. The thought of Trig has always scared me. I look at the formulas, the unit circle, the sines, cosines, and tangents and I just freeze up. I bypassed this course in high school, went on to major in English Literature and Journalism for my first go-around in college, and always avoided this course!
Well, it seems like it’s time to face that fear! Although I don’t think Chemistry requires much Trig, the mathematics department at my school seems to think it’s the new rite of passage for people interested in any health degree besides nursing. So, I bit the bullet and walked into class today. I almost didn’t. I found myself thinking of excuses to just drop the course and find another college that didn’t have this difficult Chemistry pre-requisite. The excuses ran through my head: “It’s too hard to find parking! Forget it!” “I’m too old for this!” “Who am I kidding? I suck at math!” “The class in one of the oldest buildings at the school. Why bother?” “My GPA is great. This class might tank it!” I ended up pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind and stepped forward, through my fear and walked through the classroom door.
Luckily, I’ve been preparing for this course during the winter break by reviewing algebra concepts, and I’m glad I did. It definitely helped. Still, after day one, I’m already overwhelmed and the other students seem so much sharper than me!
Being in class today reminded me of the fear I felt when I first decided to go back to school as an older adult. I remember walking into my first course, Human Genetics, and seeing the very young faces of most of my classmates. Luckily, I have my grandfather’s genes (or maybe I’m delusional), and the students think I’m younger than I am, but I certainly don’t look 19! I eventually realized that there were many other non-traditional students in my midst, and that I actually really didn’t care what the kids thought of me being there. I even ended up making friends with some of them. Today, I did notice that most of my classmates were under 25, but I also noticed that there were people in there older than me!
I’ve decided to continue with this class, at least for the time being. If I can conquer my fear of Trigonometry, what other fears will I be able to conquer this year? Time will tell. I hope you are able to conquer some fears of your own this year!
