I steered way clear of any math subjects and tutored in Spanish, English and Government. I had taken honors classes in English and Government and sailed through on happy clouds, but avoided any kind of math like a virtual plague. .
I got through high school with A's, B's and C's. Good enough to get into UT. I had the desire to be a teacher of high school students in Drama and Government or History. No math in there. But, as I learned, they want well-rounded teachers. So I signed up for what sounded like the easiest class - Introduction to Mathematics. I went two days and it was all proofs, theorems and definitions. I dropped that class. Somehow, I got all the way through Junior year with no other math classes and had to start my student teaching assignment. They put me in with a classroom full of awful fifth graders. I ran screaming from that class and never went back.
At that point, I was 21 and didn't have a clue what to do with my life. I just knew that going to school, majoring in Drama was getting me nowhere. If I changed majors, I'd have another three years to go because almost every class I had taken was related to Drama. So I entered the "real- workforce. The one without food service in it. And I met Math again. I was a little intimidated at first, but after we got to know each other again, we found a happy chord. I found that I was quite the wizard in figuring out exactly how many credit cards I'd have to sell in order to pay the rent and bills every month. All that vocal training really paid off when it came to Telemarketing. I was the number ONE salesperson for the first four months I worked there. Then they had me working with those who struggled with their pitch and helping in training classes. I made about $26K working part time my first year! OK. So math can be very helpful in counting money. And if x = the number of sales needed to gross $26K working only 4 hours a day, I guarantee you, I knew what x stood for! .
