The Worst Class of the Day: Math

I slam my locker door shut and slowly walk in to the class room.  I sit down at a table and talk to my friends in our last thirty seconds before complete boredom.  The bell rings in a sighing monotone voice.  I open my binder and flip to a blank page.  I stare blankly at my paper, only looking up to see if another antigonizing minute has ticked by.  The worst 70 minutes of every school day.  Math.

One thing about math that makes it horrible is the teacher.  Not all five of the teachers -- only the one.  All of the rest of them are completely nice and try to teach in the most helpful and interesting way possible.  Of course, there has to be that one bad teacher.  She is a looming dark cloud that reaches out from the crevices of the room to yell at students.  Even if she wasn't such a bad teacher that discourages her students from learning anything at all, she has a terrible personality.  She talks to students in a harsh, condescending tone, then expects complete respect from us.  She gives little direction, then expects students to be able to automatically know what she wants us to do.  This nightmare of a teacher is one very big reason that math class is the cloud shadowing my day.  

If this teacher is the dark, looming cloud, then Aleks is a hurricane.  I absolutely hate learning off of a computerized program.  ALEKS doesn't push me to meet my goals like a normal classroom setting does.  I dislike "work-at-your-own-pace" environments, because I feel like they don't motivate me to reach short term goals.  ALEKS also is rude and discouraging to the students.  If you click the explain button too many times, the programs says "let's try something else (because you obviously are too stupid to understand this topic.)"  This is not helped by the fact that a certain teacher always clicks the explain button after she explains the topic.  ALEKS is a program that works well for some, but not all students and is very unhelpful to the ones who don't like it.  

Despite the ALEKS program, I also don't like the formulas in math.  In a regular course there are about 100 topics covered.  In ALEKS there are about 300 per course.  This not only increases the amount of work the student has to do, but also makes us memorize an unnecessary amount of formulas.  This is particularly problematic with parabolas.  I can remember all of the formulas, but I can't figure out which formula belongs to each type of parabola graphing method.  I know which one to use while I'm learning the topic, but it is nearly impossible to tell which one to use on tests.  An excessive amount of formulas in math confuses students and makes learning harder for everyone.   

In math, there are many things that I don't like.  Unfortunately, it is very important in life.  Despite my hatred of math, it has taught me one important thing.  Even if you don't enjoy something, you can always make the best of it and achieve your goals.  I think that this is a very important thing to realize in life.  You aren't always going to want to do things, but sometimes it is worth it to work hard and see past what you don't like to accomplish you goals.