Becoming Literate

Sitting there, on my first day of junior year, I knew I was lost. And there will be homework every night, with tests being at the end of every unit Explained Mrs. Begler. Sitting in my desk, I observed the classroom. The drab blackboard, the white walls, the series of motivational posters of cheery eyed and toothy grinned calculators telling me that math is fun. I was not having fun. In fact, I used to be good at math. That is, up until the alphabet became involved. I looked around the class to see if anyone else was as panic stricken by the college algebra course as I was. Regardless of the fact that the first day was a back to school refresher, I was not happy. I knew that the entire year would be me falling behind and struggling to catch up. While moving through the course I began to understand some concepts. M equals slope, b is the Y-intercept. I felt confident, but only until we had our first unit exam. Walking to class on the day of that exam, I was sure I would do well. As I entered the classroom, the tests were faced down on the desks, and we were to start immediately as we came in. Who knew that on the small 8x11 piece of paper, that there would be enough problems to make me completely unsure of myself. I could hear my confidence in my knowledge of the subject deflating abruptly, like the air being let out of a balloon. I picked up my pencil and began to work. Y=mx+b when Y is 23 and b is 68, graph the solution. I read over and over, as if at some point I there would be a key word that would make me understand it all. There was none. Not wanting to leave the test blank, I put down my best guess for the first question. And the next, and the one after that. Eventually, after a long span of guessing and trying to remember anything in order to get some points, I was finished with my test. I turned it in with the feeling Im sure every student that has ever been has experienced at some point in their academic career: everything on this piece of paper is just terrible.