#since they'd have it on file from when they waived my math credit

[sage-nebula]

Thinking about how much I suffered in school due to having an undiagnosed learning disability because by and large the world doesn't seem to know that there even is a learning disability when it comes to math . . . jfc

Like I got my first failing grade ever in fourth grade because I didn't understand long division and wasn't allowed to use a calculator to do it for me. It's not that I didn't want to understand, I tried my best, but my brain just can't hold or conceptualize numbers. My brain can't make the connection of what happens to the numbers to get the results. So I had to bring a report card home with an F in math when I was 9 and got torn apart by my biomom as a result of it.

In the grades following I managed to scrape by with Ds only because of participation points. I paid attention in class and I turned in assignments with a fuckton of wrong answers, but that was enough to give me a consolation D on my report card instead. Junior year I failed geometry because, again, my brain just can't hold or understand the numbers, plus I had depression and anxiety and a trauma disorder etc etc, all of which I had no treatment for. The result? Grounded for an entire summer while I went to summer school to make up the credit. I passed summer school only because we had tests at the end of the lesson, when I could still hold the information in my head.

During all of this, did ANYONE suggest I might have a learning disability? No. Because unlike dyslexia, dyscalculia and other learning disabilities related to math aren't well-known. Reading is seen as something that's so hard to grasp, but in math there's only one right answer so how could there be a disability for that? Long words are complicated, but who doesn't understand numbers? Worse still is the people who do struggle with math a little, but who can still manage and retain the information, because they're like, "oh yeah I also suck at math haha maybe I'm disabled too!" and it's like, no, unless you've been driven to tears because a customer gave you additional change after you already input their total into the cash register and now they and all the people in line behind them are expecting you to be able to count the change in the way that means you know what to give them back (since it's now different than what's on the register) but you literally cannot wrap your head around this no matter how many times they explain it to you, you're not disabled, you just don't like it.

In college I majored in creative writing and I was told that I had to take a math class for a gen ed. I was at first told basic math would count, so I took that. It was so difficult, and I got so stressed, that I gave myself stomach ulcers, but I managed to pass with a C-. I was then told, oh sorry! This is too low level of a course to count. So then I tried business math. Failed it. Formal logic. Failed it. College algebra. Failed it. In college algebra I would understand it okay in class, but then when I'd get home I wouldn't remember how to do it. 10 problems would take me 5 hours as I tried to re-teach myself the material from the textbook. But on the test we couldn't use the textbook, so guess what? I failed.

I had a complete emotional and mental breakdown because I wasn't going to be able to graduate without a fucking math course. And it was only after I was literally sobbing in the academic advising office that someone said, "if you can get diagnosed with a learning disability, we can waive the credit."

(Note: I didn't even want the credit waived per se, I just wanted my basic math class to count like I was told it would my freshman year.)

I was 26 years old and this was the FIRST TIME I had EVER heard that there was a learning disability for mathematics. THE FIRST TIME. I paid $600 to get evaluated and was told that while I was in the 99th percentile for language ability, the discrepancy between that and my mathematics ability was the largest the evaluator had ever seen in his 60 years of running these exams. Which, you know, makes sense. When I took the ACT I got a 32 in reading and writing each, but a 15 in math (and 19 in science because of all the math). It tanked my score. Suddenly it all made sense.

But it took TWENTY-SIX (26) YEARS for anyone to even SUGGEST this could be a possibility. And it's still not fully understood or taken seriously! Accommodations can be made in the workplace for dyslexic people, but when I told my boss just this past week that I have dyscalculia, he laughed because he thought the term was a joke, a riff on dyslexia, just for someone being bad at math. Now, my boss is kind of an asshole in general, but still. It's not a joke. I'm not just bad at math. I am INCAPABLE of doing math. My brain can't wrap around numerical concepts. And even in the off-chance that I understand what's going on in the lesson, I can't retain it. When I got evaluated there were problems in the evaluation that we had just discussed the PREVIOUS WEEK in college algebra. Less than seven days prior. I REMEMBERED that we went over it in the lesson. But did I remember how it all fit together? No. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I nearly started crying during the goddamn examination because of how humiliated I was.

I suffered so much into my late twenties because no one at any point in my educational career understood that mathematics disabilities are a thing. Math is thought to be "the universal language" so if you can't do it you're just lazy or not trying or, hey, it's hard, but you still CAN do it, you just need to try harder. It's so angering and so upsetting and drives me fucking bonkers. I've got my diagnosis now so I'm not suffering any longer but jfc. It was a fucking nightmare.