LeliaThomas.Com

Log what? An official rant about mathematics.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned a few hundred times on this site, I’m no math whiz. It’s partly due to not having a natural talent for it, and the rest of it is pure disinterest. With great happiness, I have effortlessly avoided math since my last requirement course of algebra II, which I finished when I was 15. I’ve been able to avoid math effortlessly, because–surprise, surprise–it turns out you don’t need anything outside of basics in “the real world.” Unfortunately, university is not the real world, and I am required to take a technology course that I will never find useful in order to complete my degree. This course is a basic physics course, and it includes an old bane of mine, logarithmic equations.

To make matters worse, there is no textbook for the subject, just lecture notes that are divided up into sound technology and visual technology. The equations that I’ll actually use on the exam are buried deep in these terribly unorganized notes that average at about 13 pages of utter bullshit a piece. They’re dry, they’re boring, they’re unpractical, and I want to drive a pen through my eyeball.

I like my lecturer. He’s a good guy, and I’ve had him for another class in the past, but I sort of get the feeling that he finds this crap boring as well. The lectures are a joke. It’s 45 minutes of his reading the lectures notes to us. I gave up on that and stopped going in the third week. I can read by myself, thank you very much. I’m such a big girl!

Then there are the tutorials, where we go and receive answers on question sheets that apply this knowledge that few of us will ever find useful. Please understand, I’m not just whinging here. This is a class made up of graphic designers and writers for the most part, and few of us are clear as to why we’re there; few of us are good at math. But apparently we need to know how sound waves refract, reflect and diffract in different rooms, settings and through various speakers; this takes logarithmic equations.

In today’s tutorial, someone asked for further information on logarithms, as he didn’t remember how to do them from high school. (Imagine that, a few of us have forgotten how to use something we hardly understood 6+ years ago!) The tutor, who isn’t all that grand, essentially told us that we should remember from previous years. The last time I used these things was when I was 15 and was trying to get good marks under my extremely butch lesbian teacher. I remember more about my lesbian teacher than I do logarithms. And no, I don’t know what that says about me.

I’ve emailed the course coordinator, asking if I can meet with him and get some help with this subject, but it’s frustrating that it’s come to this. I’m not stupid by a long shot, I know, and this wouldn’t be happening if I had more control over what I have to take to complete my degree. I’d never put myself in a class like this, because I know it’s not something I am very good at, and I know it’s something that I find really, REALLY boring. All this expensive class is going to be for me is something where I temporarily learn something, spit it out for the exam, then blissfully forget it–never to use it again. So much for an education in the things that interest you, but then, it’s never really been about that, has it?

Oh well. I’ll stop my ranting. A ham sandwich calls.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Elise

I recall being told at school that in this age of calculators I would never, ever need to know how to do long division, so there was no need to teach it to us. Come second year uni I’m expected to know how to do it for calculating medications, you know, just in case pharmacy haven’t done their job and written out the dose, the phone lines are down so you can’t contact pharmacy and there are absolutely no calculators around, even in mobile phones. Yup, I’m sure that in whatever emergency situation that could cause such havoc anyone would be up for some long division.