Freestyle Week #8

When I went to high school they required you to take at least three years worth of math in order to graduate. They didn’t indicate that if someday you were planning on going to college that you should take algebra, because most colleges require you to have at least algebra 1 under your belt when entering. So, I decided to take the easy way out and took classes I was interested in….accounting classes. Well, here I am seven years later going back to college and they have you take an entrance exam to see where you should be placed. Yeah, that was interesting. There I was just staring at the darn computer for what felt like hours, looking at these math equations like: 2(x-y)+(3x+y). Right, like I’m going to know what the heck that’s supposed to mean. That doesn’t look like a credit or debit to me. So needless to say, I flunked the math portion. Now here I am and in order to graduate with a business management degree I need to take and pass intermediate algebra but before I can take that class I have to go through pre-algebra and algebra 1. But since the college is so gracious they offer a program called “plato.” Plato helps you learn pre-algebra and algebra 1. And the best part, it is FREE! So, off I go…three months later I finished the “plato” course and now its time to test to see if I can enter intermediate algebra. Which brings me up to yesterday. Monday. I went for my algebra test at 830am. I had worked so hard and I was feeling semi-confident for being completely self-taught. All I kept telling myself was I needed at least a 65 in order to get into intermediate algebra. I got a 63. What a kicker. After all the hard work I had put in to learning and being confident went down the drain. I was so upset when I had to go to the teacher and tell her I failed. On the brighter side; she could see how hard I had been working and she knew that I had already learned so much and I had the concept, she felt I would be just fine moving into intermediate algebra so she put a note on test sheet that gets sent to enrollment that said for me to be allowed to enter intermediate algebra. I thought that was awesome. I am so happy. I’ve already talked to my advisor and I will be taking intermediate algebra this summer!