At work the other day, my colleagues and I lamented about our avoidance of a (legitimate) math class in college.  I empathized — as soon as I matriculated to a liberal arts school, I made certain to fulfill the required math and science courses with classes that had as little math and science as academically possible.  This is one of my biggest academic regrets.  To this day, one of the few things I remember from my college-level science course is the day my professor decided to simulate crab sex by banging (zing!) two model crabs together.  I can’t even tell you why it was scientific, but it happened.

I will explain my aversion to math and science through, of course, a metaphor:  Say you’re a penguin raised in a nest of eagles because plausibility is not necessary for this metaphor to make sense.  One day, your Eagle friends begin to flap their wings and fly and you, the penguin, begin to flap your little wings as well.  However, instead of gliding majestically through the sky, you fall from the nest, beak first, into the ground below.  You’re all like, “Why the fuck can’t I fly, man?  I’m a fucking bird.  Birds fucking fly.”  You try and you try until one day, feeling dejected, you decide to walk thousands of miles until you find yourself in a colony of penguins.  “OMG! ”  you exclaim.  “Now I understand.  I can’t fly, but I can swim like a mother fucker.  I’m never going to fly again.  Swim, swim, swim.”

My friends, that is how it feels to grow up in a neighborhood filled with Asians — Asians going to the grocery store, Asians in their Toyotas Corollas, Asians wearing glasses in Calculus class.  Yeah, I said it.

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To show you how terrible my math is, the following is a chart of how a writer solves mathematical equations: