Math problems

In honor of Pi Day I have a math story for you.

For a long time I was a very lazy student. At that same time I also spent a lot of time obsessing over the fact that I wasn't smart. These issues creeped up on me during my freshman year at St. Ignatius. I was put in an algebra class with a mediocre teacher, I rarely did my homework, spent class time day dreaming about boys, and failed second semester algebra. This stunned me. In my mind I was a good kid and used to being a good student (at least from my grammar school days). I had to go to summer school for math. This turn of events affected my ability to view a math problem objectively for the next several years. Despite eight previous years of math success, I became "bad at math". I let this belief define me until it seeped into my work in other subjects as well. It became a punchline in that always-self-depricating sense of humor of mine. ("I agree with Barbie, 'math is hard.'") In college I didn't trust myself to take a "real" math class so I took Problem Solving. (Which I called math for English majors). I spent six years knowing that I did not possess the ability to find the slope of a line. If there was a graph on a standardized test I just filled in the letter "B" and went on to the next problem. Ironically, I always thought that math should have been my best subject because I am such an organized (anal retentive?) person. What's not to like about a subject where things are often black and white? Where answers can be found with the right amount of hard work.
Then right out of college I got a job that paid very well as a tutor for district 201. Guess what area students struggled with most? I had to start teaching Algebra, Geometry, and even a bit of Trig. I realized that I could retain the knowledge that m = y2-y1 over x2-x1. I could solve quadratic equations and figure out the radius of a circle. Only then did years of self-doubt begin to make way for the realization that I could have been doing well in math all along, but I hadn't really worked at it. I took the easy way out and believed that I was "bad at math" instead of working harder to understand it. I love my career as an English teacher, but I sometimes wonder if I had worked a bit harder and trusted myself more, perhaps I could have not closed so many doors that are open to people who are "good at math".