Safety in Numbers
I never considered myself a numbers person.
Oh, I dabbled in all the college prep math classes, and took all form of giddy pleasure in the One Right Answer phenomenon. In college though, I took a calculus class from a NASA brainiac who couldn't teach. Being the quitter I was, I abandoned math and turned to liberal arts for comfort.
The numbers bug stuck with me. I managed to sneak in a statistics classes and a few ‘business math’ classes to round out my sociology degree. The classes, while difficult, stirred a pure satisfaction in me. Those long pages of pencil scratches, the proofs and their logic, and always, the marvel of the One Right Number at the end.
In an attempt to put the analytical back into my life, I have tried at several points to earn an MBA. This has largely been a disaster. Cleveland State proved too hard to navigate the bureaucracy, and Webster University was too far touchy-feely for my hard numbers desire. DePaul proved promising, but it was an MFA in Writing. You’d think that a writing degree could hold my interest for 48 credit hours, but alas, the program was for those who wanted to teach others to write. I really don’t get how someone could teach writing rather than do it, and anyway, teaching is not for me, so off my plate it fell.
Time passed and I found myself in a great job with some realistic upward potential. I decided, yet again, to pursue a second degree. This time, with DS and Howard in the picture, I opted for the on-line route. In the end, I returned to Webster. They gave me full credit for the classes I took back in 1995 (and I love them for that), which was reason enough to return. And they had put a whole new section into the program--numbers. MBA in Finance, here I come.
The first two classes, marketing and organizational behavior, floored me with their work load. I did well, but I longed for a quantitative class. I had 100 pages to read every week, and reams of reports to write. All I wanted was something where I can do the problem and come up with the One Right Answer. Wasn't this a finance degree? Didn't I do my ucky core classes already? Enough with the yakkety-yak on the papers, the citations and referenceson topics I’m only marginally interested in. Please, get me to the numbers. I want to stretch my left brain.
Ah, grasshopper. Be careful what you wish for.
I’m taking Principles of Financial Accounting this term. This class is kicking my arse up and down the street, let me tell you. The paltry PowerPoint presentations that serve as 'lectures' do nothing but turn the textbook material into animated drivel. I work until my brain wires cross and I can’t understand even my own notes, and then I hang it up. I wouldn’t say that I’m now longing for the right-brained classes, but sometimes I question whether I’m a numbers person.
I want to be, and to think I am, but sometimes when I’m elbows-deep in Bond Discount Rates and my shoulders ache from hunching over my notebook, I wonder.
I used to say that college was great except for the classes. I learned so much more about life in 4 years than I ever could have absorbed from the hours in lecture halls. Well, if that’s true for undergrad, it goes double for MBA school. I’m learning a ton, and most of it is happening outside the college-ruled e-papers I’m stuffing into my professor’s In Box.
In deference to that adage, and to my longing for a numbers-centered mind, here’s a small (numbered!) list of things I’m discovering about Me along the route to higher education:
1. I do not know how to learn.
I’ve never really had to study for anything. I took books home in high school because that’s what people did, but I never used them. College, apart from the Calc fiasco, was more or less a breeze. All around me, engineers ate the early shift in the dining commons, hit their desks by 5pm and stayed up into the small hours of the morning, solving problems, checking take-home exams and studying until their eyes glazed. Not me. I spent 2 years hanging out with Howard and cramming for exams by reading the entire textbook in a day. Halleluiah for my photographic memory, otherwise I might still be an undergrad in Cleveland.
Anyway, I never learned to study, and it's proving problematic for me, because...
2. I will not necessarily ‘get’ something the first time I’m exposed to it.
Because of my history with school, I expect to understand something the first time it’s explained to me. That is not how accounting is going. I have to read the chapters at least twice. I do all the self-study material offered, all my homework, and most of the problems posed in the textbook’s web-enabled tutorial. Even then, sometimes I’m just barely skating on the edge of understanding. Howard says it’s because I have to learn everything on my own. Maybe. I admit, some days I long for a dull, monotonous lecture, or for a classroom full of the dumb looks I give my computer every night. At least then I could raise my hand, ask a helpful-to-me question and get in answered in real time. I can e-mail my instructor and he’s pretty good about answering me. But usually by the time he responds, I’ve either figured it out or decided that I just won’t get it this time. This leads me to the nadir of this experience, which is recognizing that.....
3. I will make mistakes.
Wow, is this one tough to swallow. I got 100% on every assignment in all my classes up until now. Even that inane paper I had to write for Professor DumbAss managed to get a perfect score on the rewrite. Not so with accounting. I’m still carrying an A average, but I’m making mistakes in the homework. I have not accepted this, and I think it’s hampering my ability to learn. This leads me right back to Problem #1.
Or really, it’s all part of the same problem. I never learned to study, I am impatient with myself, and I abhor the idea of imperfection. Sucks, sucks, sucks.
It occurred to me this week that my issues with weight loss are identical to my issues with this class. I have really struggled with my weight since Christmas. I think it’s part of the reason I haven’t been writing as frequently lately. The other part is this dog-level homework, but still, I could probably sneak out an hour a week to put a short post up. Of course there’s another ‘problem’, succinct speech. I’m pretty sure that’s why I never wrote poems or short stories—I can’t be brief! There’s too much to say, and way too much to complain about! What if I missed something?
Okay, anyway. So I ate too much at Christmas and I waited too long to admit that the weight gain was real, and so this week, I finally accepted that I’d have to go back into loss mode. I had several false starts, but this week seems to be sticking. I haven’t digressed at all this week, and the scale is tipping back downward. I’m still hovering near the 150 mark, but the octopus has receded, and people at work are asking me if I’ve lost more weight, so it’s working.
I see now that I didn’t really overcome my eating problems when I lost the weight last year. I fixed the issue, but I didn’t solve the problem. I think I was so jacked to start the program and so determined to get the weight off of me that I didn’t bother paying attention to the ‘happily ever after’ part.
I’m still tempted by everything chocolate and I’m not to be trusted alone in a room with a pantry. So when temptation hit, I folded like a peanut butter sandwich on white bread. Oh, save me….
This week I managed to get through gymnastics by downing a non-fat cappuccino and the Wednesday night Boys Out Climbing by staying at work and refusing to go grazing. It was hard, hard stuff, but I made it, and today I’m wearing my size 3 jeans with no dunlap on the belly. I even had to cinch a belt on to keep my knickers from showing.
I expect that I still have 2 weeks more in loss mode before I can return to true maintenance. I’m working on accepting the fact that I’ll have to learn that, too. Lucky for me (?) I’ll be in a week-long break between classes, so I can really think about how to experiment with adding points without pumping back up.
My hope is that this time will be different for me. It is already, really. I stopped the gain at 7 pounds and I got it under control while I was still in my current size. I do have a lot of history and good habits that I can use to help me through this, and of course I have Howard. I won’t ever have lost ‘more’ weight, or even done anything other than remove the pounds I’d gained while I wasn’t on guard. But pounds off is pounds off, even if it’s a reprise.
It’s hard to accept this, because it feels like recovering from a failure, rather than learning a lesson. But 147 is 147, even if I have to hit it twice to make it stick. You might say it's my One Right Answer.
A the C(runching My Way Back Down)
Oh, I dabbled in all the college prep math classes, and took all form of giddy pleasure in the One Right Answer phenomenon. In college though, I took a calculus class from a NASA brainiac who couldn't teach. Being the quitter I was, I abandoned math and turned to liberal arts for comfort.
The numbers bug stuck with me. I managed to sneak in a statistics classes and a few ‘business math’ classes to round out my sociology degree. The classes, while difficult, stirred a pure satisfaction in me. Those long pages of pencil scratches, the proofs and their logic, and always, the marvel of the One Right Number at the end.
In an attempt to put the analytical back into my life, I have tried at several points to earn an MBA. This has largely been a disaster. Cleveland State proved too hard to navigate the bureaucracy, and Webster University was too far touchy-feely for my hard numbers desire. DePaul proved promising, but it was an MFA in Writing. You’d think that a writing degree could hold my interest for 48 credit hours, but alas, the program was for those who wanted to teach others to write. I really don’t get how someone could teach writing rather than do it, and anyway, teaching is not for me, so off my plate it fell.
Time passed and I found myself in a great job with some realistic upward potential. I decided, yet again, to pursue a second degree. This time, with DS and Howard in the picture, I opted for the on-line route. In the end, I returned to Webster. They gave me full credit for the classes I took back in 1995 (and I love them for that), which was reason enough to return. And they had put a whole new section into the program--numbers. MBA in Finance, here I come.
The first two classes, marketing and organizational behavior, floored me with their work load. I did well, but I longed for a quantitative class. I had 100 pages to read every week, and reams of reports to write. All I wanted was something where I can do the problem and come up with the One Right Answer. Wasn't this a finance degree? Didn't I do my ucky core classes already? Enough with the yakkety-yak on the papers, the citations and referenceson topics I’m only marginally interested in. Please, get me to the numbers. I want to stretch my left brain.
Ah, grasshopper. Be careful what you wish for.
I’m taking Principles of Financial Accounting this term. This class is kicking my arse up and down the street, let me tell you. The paltry PowerPoint presentations that serve as 'lectures' do nothing but turn the textbook material into animated drivel. I work until my brain wires cross and I can’t understand even my own notes, and then I hang it up. I wouldn’t say that I’m now longing for the right-brained classes, but sometimes I question whether I’m a numbers person.
I want to be, and to think I am, but sometimes when I’m elbows-deep in Bond Discount Rates and my shoulders ache from hunching over my notebook, I wonder.
I used to say that college was great except for the classes. I learned so much more about life in 4 years than I ever could have absorbed from the hours in lecture halls. Well, if that’s true for undergrad, it goes double for MBA school. I’m learning a ton, and most of it is happening outside the college-ruled e-papers I’m stuffing into my professor’s In Box.
In deference to that adage, and to my longing for a numbers-centered mind, here’s a small (numbered!) list of things I’m discovering about Me along the route to higher education:
1. I do not know how to learn.
I’ve never really had to study for anything. I took books home in high school because that’s what people did, but I never used them. College, apart from the Calc fiasco, was more or less a breeze. All around me, engineers ate the early shift in the dining commons, hit their desks by 5pm and stayed up into the small hours of the morning, solving problems, checking take-home exams and studying until their eyes glazed. Not me. I spent 2 years hanging out with Howard and cramming for exams by reading the entire textbook in a day. Halleluiah for my photographic memory, otherwise I might still be an undergrad in Cleveland.
Anyway, I never learned to study, and it's proving problematic for me, because...
2. I will not necessarily ‘get’ something the first time I’m exposed to it.
Because of my history with school, I expect to understand something the first time it’s explained to me. That is not how accounting is going. I have to read the chapters at least twice. I do all the self-study material offered, all my homework, and most of the problems posed in the textbook’s web-enabled tutorial. Even then, sometimes I’m just barely skating on the edge of understanding. Howard says it’s because I have to learn everything on my own. Maybe. I admit, some days I long for a dull, monotonous lecture, or for a classroom full of the dumb looks I give my computer every night. At least then I could raise my hand, ask a helpful-to-me question and get in answered in real time. I can e-mail my instructor and he’s pretty good about answering me. But usually by the time he responds, I’ve either figured it out or decided that I just won’t get it this time. This leads me to the nadir of this experience, which is recognizing that.....
3. I will make mistakes.
Wow, is this one tough to swallow. I got 100% on every assignment in all my classes up until now. Even that inane paper I had to write for Professor DumbAss managed to get a perfect score on the rewrite. Not so with accounting. I’m still carrying an A average, but I’m making mistakes in the homework. I have not accepted this, and I think it’s hampering my ability to learn. This leads me right back to Problem #1.
Or really, it’s all part of the same problem. I never learned to study, I am impatient with myself, and I abhor the idea of imperfection. Sucks, sucks, sucks.
It occurred to me this week that my issues with weight loss are identical to my issues with this class. I have really struggled with my weight since Christmas. I think it’s part of the reason I haven’t been writing as frequently lately. The other part is this dog-level homework, but still, I could probably sneak out an hour a week to put a short post up. Of course there’s another ‘problem’, succinct speech. I’m pretty sure that’s why I never wrote poems or short stories—I can’t be brief! There’s too much to say, and way too much to complain about! What if I missed something?
Okay, anyway. So I ate too much at Christmas and I waited too long to admit that the weight gain was real, and so this week, I finally accepted that I’d have to go back into loss mode. I had several false starts, but this week seems to be sticking. I haven’t digressed at all this week, and the scale is tipping back downward. I’m still hovering near the 150 mark, but the octopus has receded, and people at work are asking me if I’ve lost more weight, so it’s working.
I see now that I didn’t really overcome my eating problems when I lost the weight last year. I fixed the issue, but I didn’t solve the problem. I think I was so jacked to start the program and so determined to get the weight off of me that I didn’t bother paying attention to the ‘happily ever after’ part.
I’m still tempted by everything chocolate and I’m not to be trusted alone in a room with a pantry. So when temptation hit, I folded like a peanut butter sandwich on white bread. Oh, save me….
This week I managed to get through gymnastics by downing a non-fat cappuccino and the Wednesday night Boys Out Climbing by staying at work and refusing to go grazing. It was hard, hard stuff, but I made it, and today I’m wearing my size 3 jeans with no dunlap on the belly. I even had to cinch a belt on to keep my knickers from showing.
I expect that I still have 2 weeks more in loss mode before I can return to true maintenance. I’m working on accepting the fact that I’ll have to learn that, too. Lucky for me (?) I’ll be in a week-long break between classes, so I can really think about how to experiment with adding points without pumping back up.
My hope is that this time will be different for me. It is already, really. I stopped the gain at 7 pounds and I got it under control while I was still in my current size. I do have a lot of history and good habits that I can use to help me through this, and of course I have Howard. I won’t ever have lost ‘more’ weight, or even done anything other than remove the pounds I’d gained while I wasn’t on guard. But pounds off is pounds off, even if it’s a reprise.
It’s hard to accept this, because it feels like recovering from a failure, rather than learning a lesson. But 147 is 147, even if I have to hit it twice to make it stick. You might say it's my One Right Answer.
A the C(runching My Way Back Down)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 1:20 PM
2 Comments:
Wow. I have impeccable taste in women. Your post sounds exactly like a conversation I had with Odile, a few months back. She also ran into a problem that she could not solve the first time. And she had the same experience in school, with hardly any studying and stuff. She was also loath to admit that there are things that she can not do.
I wish you lots of strength, and do hope that you get trough this stage, to emerge lean and mean and with a degree. I for one believe you can do that!
Good post.
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