Success in college is nonlinear

I have to pass a math class in order to graduate.
While I respect math and its precision, you could literally sink Albuquerque in the void that is my desire to work on math. I’m a languages major, and I can’t see when I would ever, ever, need to graph a quadratic function.

Beyond that, the tedium and exactness of math is something I have trouble relating to, and I resent the fact that it’s forced on my degree. So I’m stuck in a place of necessary agony, like a small-town Walmart.

I think it’s inane that I have to pass algebra in order get the degree. I wish there were a class that would teach me gas mileage and tax rates, instead of the definition of a vertex. I don’t need to know how to write linear functions; I need to know how to make investments and buy bulk hexafluoride for the secret project that I’m not working on.

So a few questions as to why I must spend my potentially salacious nights on Algebra homework:

First of all: Why algebra? There are thousands of different ways math could be applied to my foreseeable life without ever needing to understand those basic rules that higher science uses. It’s a really cool process, but I just don’t see the application for me. If nothing else, make me take geometry.

Secondly, why not really challenge me? Make me earn my math credit by doing an independent project measuring the distances between coffee shops. Or labeling the graphic coordinates of Taco Bells. One way or the other, I’m engaging in math.

And third, why do you, the mammoth university bureaucracy, take no pity on me and my brain-dead math-bastard brethren when it comes to passing our sheepskin? I just want to be done, to move on with life, and forget every single thing about a parabola. I’m calling out for help. And a tutor.

But in all fairness, my math is being served to me very nicely. I very much like the situation in which I’m taking it, and its all-or-nothing consequence. That in itself is a challenge. So I take from that a certain understanding of how to deal with the class: To challenge myself for the sake of success, regardless of the subject matter. Surely, that’s a big part of earning a degree.

So I’m buckling down and sledding into hell. I wish I could convince myself that I care about the material, but I just don’t. It’s nothing against algebra because without it I’m sure I’d be sapping the electricity from a fetid potato.

Rather, my complaint is against a similarly rigid structure that forces all students to pass the same unnecessary courses. Get with the times, administration. And get with them in like the next two weeks and e-mail me. My future depends on you, or…me. Odd it should work that way.

Reader, I hope you’re acing all your courses and practicing your tassel-flipping. But for all of you dealing with a predicament similar to mine, I offer encouragement in the words of Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

And here’s hoping a quadratic formula doesn’t confront me in a dark alley and say, “Factor me or I’ll kick your ass.”