When you are young, and intelligent, and think outside the box, and the school system doesn’t know exactly what to do with you, and certain ducks fall in a row, you wind up in “Gifted Class.” Back when I was in school, Gifted Class ran through eighth grade; after that, we “gifted” students were herded into advanced placement courses — the theory being that since all of us were good at some things, all of us should be good at everything. As you can probably tell I have mixed feelings about the way gifted elementary students were/are treated, but I’ll save that rant for another day. I am always reluctant to criticize the system too harshly because I think everybody involved had our (the students) best interests in mind.
Around ninth grade I found myself being herded into Yukon High School’s “advanced” math courses, starting with Honors Algebra II in ninth grade and Honors Geometry in tenth grade. This put me on course for Honors Trigonometry/Honors Analytic Geometry my junior year of high school, and Honors Calculus my senior year.
Every test I have ever taken has placed me as far into “right-brained” territory as one can be. Right-brained people are more artistic; as a kid I was into videogames, music, and writing. Left-brained people are more analytical; they love logic, and puzzles, and, well, math. I did not love math. In fact, throughout Honors Geometry, the only part I found remotely enjoyable was the time we created drawings using geometric shapes. While others drew simple geometric shapes (a diamond, a shamrock) I concocted a detailed picture of a wizard holding a fireball with a sphere for a head, a series of parallelograms for a body, and my best attempt at a hand-drawn fractal for the fire. I got an “A” on that drawing, but soon it was back to theorems and proofs and postulates and all sorts of things I refused to memorize. That year (tenth grade) broke my ten-year-streak of straight A’s.
In eleventh grade, for some ungodly reason, I enrolled in Honors Trigonometry/Honors Analytic Geometry (you got one semester of each, to vary the pain a bit). Mr. Schultz taught both classes, and let me tell you, they were brutal. For starters, his classes required a lot of homework and a lot of studying. Three days before school started that year I got my driver’s license, and one day before school started I started working at Mazzio’s pizza to pay for my gas and insurance. 40-hour work weeks were the norm from that point on. I routinely worked 4pm-11pm on school nights, and of course, my homework suffered. It didn’t help that I had these math classes for first hour — I’m not a morning person, and hitting me with advanced math before I discovered coffee was just wrong. But the biggest reason for my failure was a complete lack of caring on my part about Mr. Schultz’s class. I saw absolutely no point to any of it. I didn’t know what I was going to be “when I grew up” (still don’t), but I knew it wasn’t going to be dealing with sines, cosines, and tangents, that was for sure.
Looking back, ol’ Schultz gave me one chance after another. He would let me (practically beg me) to turn in whatever homework I had completed, whether it was late or not, and would award me partial credit for almost anything I bothered to attempt. Any forward progress I made on the homework would be decimated on test day, where it would be proven time and time again that I wasn’t “getting it.” Out of desperation my parents hired a tutor. That didn’t help, and I was accused of squandering the tutor money on drugs. (In retrospect, it probably would have been a better use of everyone’s time and money if I had been.) No amount of tutoring was going to change the fact that I had no interest in the subjects AT ALL.
At the end of the year I had failed both classes, and I remember hearing some stinging words, “I guess Rob O’Hara finally found something he couldn’t do.” I’ll have you know that made me so mad that my senior year I took both of those classes again and passed them. I don’t remember acing them, but I did pass them with a “high-B/low-A” average, which was enough to prove my point.
Fast forward ten years. In 2000 I was finally finishing up my “ten year associate’s degree” at Oklahoma City Community College when I happened to run into Mr. Schultz who was then teaching math to college students. We exchanged pleasantries and ribbed each other a bit. When I asked him if he remembered me, he said, “Of course I do — you were both the funniest and worst student I ever had!” I returned the favor by informing him that “Thankfully, I have never needed a single thing you ever taught in any of your classes my entire life.” We both got a laugh out of the encounter, and once again parted ways.
I’ve told that story several times, but you know what? It’s not entirely true. I mean, the story of our encounter is true, but I don’t think it’s true that I “never needed a single thing” that Mr. Schultz taught me. While it’s true I didn’t learn much about math from the guy, I did learn that often your results reflect the time and work you put into a project. And as hard as I tried not to, I learned a bit of logic in his classes, logic that I use on a daily basis when troubleshooting computer systems or writing programs or scripts. And through my own experience, I learned that sometimes the symptoms of a problem aren’t always what they seem.
Last night the fam and I had dinner at Chileno’s. 3/4 the way through our meal, who should walk in and sit down next to us but Mr. and Mrs. Schultz. (Both Susan and I had Mr. Schultz for math; additionally, Susan had Mrs. Schultz for French.) After the two of them ordered their dinner, I discreetly got the waitress’ attention and asked her to bring us their ticket, which I promptly paid for. On the way out of the restaurant we stopped to say “hi” and introduce our children to Mr. and Mrs. Schultz. They asked what we were up to and we all talked for a couple of minutes before parting ways. Right before we left I told Mr. Schultz, “don’t let these people charge you twice for dinner!” He laughed, but I’m sure he didn’t really get what I was referring to until long after we were gone.
Mr. Schultz, if you ever happen to read this, you’ll be happy to know I was able to figure out how much to tip all by myself.
I remember a parent/teacher conference with Mr. Schultz. He said you were a lot of fun in class. If I remember right, he said you and Stony (?) kept the class laughing. I asked what I could do to help you pass, and basically it was nothing. Nine weeks of zeroes on homework couldn’t be overcome. I do remember wanting to either kill you or do drugs myself! But in the end, you still became the success you were meant to be! Just not in math!!
And for the record, he did spend the money on the tutor, not drugs.
That’s a Rhombus of a story if I have ever heard one!