My Misspent Youth?
This probably won’t come as a surprise to most, but I spent a large portion of my elementary years as a mathlete.
For the fifth and sixth grades, I was a proud, non-alternate member of my school’s math team. Yes, I chose to take tests outside of the designated school hours, and I spent at least one afternoon a week engaged in our “practices” of reviewing math principles and playing with protractors. (Well, we weren’t “playing with” protractors – that would have been contrary to our goal. We drew perfect circles and measured radii for a reason.)
The high point of every math team season was the two tournaments we participated in – one was held at Highland’s Day in Birmingham, and the other was an “away” tournament at Montgomery Academy.
(If you ever want to feel better about your own adolescent years, consider this:
I attended private school – where I prided myself on being on the honor roll and participating in the French Club – but played sports in the league associated with the local public school. I knew no one on my team. I was “the weird private school kid.” And, with my athletic abilities, there was already more than enough to make fun of me for just based on what I did on the field. I am not kidding when I say that I usually had to go through 20 minutes of keep away before having the cap I needed to play.
What could make this worse, you ask? I once missed a game because of one of my math tournaments. This is a fact I was more than willing to keep to myself. But, as my softball coach was giving me my award for “best sportsmanship” – yep, you heard it right – he announced that I put as much heart into my softball playing as I did into my math tournaments.
I can still hear the snickers.
The most difficult part of the math tournament was known as “ciphering.” Ciphering is also the most active part of a math tournament because it’s the only activity that doesn’t involve sitting in a silent room taking a test.For ciphering, a member of each team takes a seat at the front of the auditorium and waits for a math problem to be placed on an overhead projector. The team member must them solve the problem and hand it off to the checker behind them.
And, here’s the real kicker: If you finish the problem in 30 seconds, you get two points. If you finish in 60 seconds, you get one point. (No answers were accepted after 60 seconds.) What is a mathlete to do? Double-check your work and be sure of the one point? Or, throw caution to the wind and try for the two points? Oh, the dilemma.
When I was 11, ciphering terrified me. It used to make me almost sick to my stomach. Mood rings were pretty popular around the time I was on the math team, and I remember thinking that if I wore a mood ring during ciphering, it would be pitch black because of all the nerves I had. (Of course, I would never wear a mood ring during actual ciphering – it might have slowed down my pencil work.)
I would always cipher. (I didn’t want to risk being bumped down to the team’s alternate position.) But, I was never quite comfortable with it. And, I don't think I ever scored more than two points for every five questions I answered.
Even today, I get a little taste of those old ciphering (and softball) nerves every time I have to speak in front of a room full of people, go on a first date or introduce myself to strangers. (Will they judge me? Will I get something wrong? Is my skirt tucked in the back of my underwear?) I may not look much like the fifth grader who had to jump for her softball cap, but she’s still there.
I’ve come to accept that no matter how old I get, how much experience I gather or how much makeup I have on, I’ve got an adolescent girl on the inside who still can’t believe she’s out of a training bra. And, for the most part, I think I like it that way. It reminds me that despite some of the ups and downs of the last few years, I have made some progress.
After all, I can wear a baseball cap whenever I want, and when I do balance my checkbook, it happens in under 60 seconds without me hyperventilating a single bit.