I’m Actually Really Good At It.
Shane is interested in pursuing film as a career. He would like to act, but he thinks a more realistic pursuit is film or sound editing.
“Other careers are just boring,” he said.
I explained to him that he doesn’t know all the other careers, and that he may enjoy some of the careers he hasn’t yet experienced.
“If you don’t know how to do something yet,” I said, “it’s hard to say that you wouldn’t like it.”
“That’s like math,” he said.
What? I thought. What could that possibly have to do with math?
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, when I don’t know what I’m doing, math seems really hard. But as soon as I understand it, it’s really easy and I could do it all day.”
MATH?!? I thought. He LIKES math???
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “I’m actually really good at it. And it’s fun as long as I know what I’m doing.”
He likes math. Shane is in Honors level classes, and even an AP class – except in math. Because he struggled so much in Algebra I – and despised it – I told him to take non-Honors-level Algebra II, so he’s been taking on-level math classes since he started high school.
“So maybe you’ll really like some forms of math,” I said. “Remember how you liked Geometry?”
“It wasn’t my favorite,” he said.
“Well, you were good at it, even though it was an Honors class. And I have a feeling you’ll like next year’s class, too.” Next year, Shane is taking Intro to Statistics, to prepare for the AP Statistics class in 12th grade. It seems like it might be his kind of thing.
“Maybe,” he said.
“You might like some college-level math classes, too – like accounting,” I said. “You might love accounting. It’s a completely different kind of math. I think you will find a whole bunch of other things in college that interest you.”
I wish I could have told him more about accounting. Unfortunately, I know nothing about it.
But I started thinking about how little I know about how Shane’s mind actually works. He likes MATH and I’ve been holding him back from tackling the higher level stuff. He’s taking a slower paced class because – well, because algebra is not fun. It’s been documented a billion times over that algebra has little purpose in the real world – yet it’s taught in schools like Latin, as if anyone would really need to know that stuff.
Meanwhile, accounting is an “elective” that doesn’t get any credit as genuine math. It’s a “business” class. And don’t we need people who can understand business? Don’t we need people in the world who have an interest in new and varied types of numerical equations?
When Shane was young, he had more interest in the numbers on the pages of books than he did in the books themselves. I always blamed his vision processing for his attraction to numbers – but at this point, who cares why he likes numbers? Maybe he can enjoy numbers in college! Maybe he would like something other than film editing!
Of course, that didn’t stop me from taking him to California to visit film schools – but it did give me some insight into how to proceed with his college explorations.