Retail therapy vs. Math therapy w/ Tamica Marcano
Welcome to our most intense (and successful!) math therapy session yet! Has your inability to fit into that mythical “math person” category haunted you for your entire life? Today Vanessa talks to Tamica Marcano about how being labelled ADHD led to mega feelings of inadequacy, especially when it comes to math, and they discover what’s truly possible when we leap out of the boxes we once forced ourselves into. Ready to hear math therapy legit transform Tamica’s life? Let’s do this!
SHOW NOTES
We referenced one of our previous episodes during our interview, so make out you check out last season’s episode with the amazing Bruce Sellery!
Check out our IGTV to see Vanessa’s 15 second video on how to calculate a tip!
MORE FROM TAMICA MARCANO
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SHOW CREDITS
Hosted by: Vanessa Vakharia
Produced by: Sabina Wex
Edited by: David Kochberg
Logo by: Scott Wise
Theme music: WVV by Goodnight, Sunrise
Full Episode Transcript
w/ Tamica Marcano
Vanessa Vakharia: Hi, I’m Vanessa Vakharia aka The Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy - a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas, one problem at a time. When I was in grade 11, I failed math not once, but twice because I was told that I just wasn't a math person. Thanks to a math intervention in the form of an amazing teacher, I ended up scoring 99% in grade 12 math, and now I run The Math Guru, my very own math tutoring studio in Toronto. I started Math Therapy to take this conversation global and I like to think of it as not just a podcast but a movement. Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist, but the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry - no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.
Oh my god! Hi guys! Hi hi hi hi hi, and welcome to the first episode of season 2 of Math Therapy. We made it, we did it, we're here and we're back with one of my favourite episodes of all time with one of the funniest, smartest and most honest people of all time. TAMICA! Tamica is basically a dope queen who works in radio in the six, as in Toronto. Is it still cool to say the six? It’s probably not. Okay, this episode is so, so eye-opening and every time I listen to it I am amazed at how vulnerable and self-aware Tamica is and most of all how open-minded she is in terms of reconsidering her relationship to math. Today we dig into how being labelled ADHD led to feelings of inadequacy and through intense math therapy we discover what’s truly possible when we leap out of the boxes we once forced ourselves into. Ready to watch math therapy legit transform Tamica’s life? Let's do this.
Hello Tamica, welcome to the podcast.
Tamica Marcano: Thank you so much for having me! I'm super excited to be here.
V: Amazing! Okay, so, as you know we’re on Math Therapy, that is the name of the podcast. We’re gonna give you some math therapy.
T: (Laughing) Okay.
V: I wanted to honestly just start with you telling me how you feel. Do you like math?
T: Honestly, I don’t like math. I’ve tried so hard to like math growing up, you know? But I'm just afraid of math, I'll be honest. I am terrified of math, I'm terrified of numbers. I know my basic math but even, you know even those skill testing questions…
V: Like at the end of a contest?
T: Any contest, I’m like oh my goodness. So it’s one of those things where I’m terrified of numbers in general.
V: So what does that mean to be terrified of numbers? Do you see a number and literally get scared?
T: More so not numbers on their own, like telling time and stuff like that. More so just adding, subtracting, checking my bank statements - just stuff like that.
V: So what happens to you?
T: Anxiety. There’s this really funny song, I can’t remember who sings it, but it's like, “I don't want to check my bank account”, (singing) “I'm too scared to check my bank account”.
V: (Laughing)
T: Every time after a night out or anything, that song pops into my head and I will avoid checking my account for like two days. So I just get a lot of anxiety when it comes to math.
V: Okay, so has it always been this way for you?
T: Yeah it’s always been this way, I would say.
V: Let’s go back to when you were younger. Do you remember ever liking math?
T: Yes. In elementary school I remember liking math, from grade 6 to grade 8.
V: Okay that’s actually pretty late. Up until grade 8 you liked math. What happened?
T: I had a math tutor, you know in elementary school and stuff. And then I went to highschool, and you had to take Advanced Functions…
V: Okay but that’s like grade 12.
T: Grade 11, no?
V: So in grade 11 you’re choosing between different maths.
T: From grade 9 and 10, we took, I don’t remember what it was called, just math. It was different, I don't know it was very different and I found myself falling behind. But I should also mention I do have ADHD and when I was in high school I wasn't taking medication at the time because my mom was like no.
V: What specifically did she say?
T: She said, “I don’t want you taking baby crack”.
V: (Laughing)
T: I have a west Indian mother, and she’s a nurse too but she was very against medications.
V: Have you ever tried ADHD medication?
T: Oh yeah, I take it now.
V: Oh you do?
T: Yeah, I take them as an adult now. I remember the first time I took it I left the doctor's office, got the prescription and then I took it, and I was waiting for the TTC streetcar. I guess it kicked in at some point and this old lady needed help and I just got off and helped her take her stuff on there. I was so attentive and I remember feeling like, “Oh my god, this is great. I’m going to get so many things done today!”. That was when I took Ritalin. I take something else, Dexedrine now, which is better.
V: Do you take it everyday?
T: Everyday, yeah.
V: So when you were younger, you got diagnosed with ADHD, your mom is like, “No, you’re not taking that baby crack”, so you just keep doing your thing?
T: Yeah, I just tried my best to focus on things but it was really hard for me to do things and finish things when I did not care for it or if I wasn't good at it. So that was math. I remember all my other friends were smart and so they all wanted to be in the higher learning classes so me wanting to stay with my friends, I also put myself in those classes but I had a hard time, especially with math, with digesting all of that information.
On top of that I felt like my teachers weren't as patient - so it was more like “if you're not getting it then we'll talk about it after”, but then it's just like, “What aren't you getting?”. So a lot of the time I would just not do my homework or trust myself or write the equations in my calculator sleeve.
V: Ah, wow. Tanica, you’re really airing your dirty laundry here.
T: It’s therapy I gotta tell the truth.
V: (Laughing) So what ended up happening? You had mentioned that you wanted to be a plastic surgeon.
T: Yeah, there were a lot of things I wanted to do. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, also a CSI investigator. But plastic surgery was one thing I was really passionate about for a while because I wanted to help kids who were burn victims or had external trauma. And that was one way I thought I could help, but then I realized that you have to go to med school, and chemistry and math were huge. You have to have really good grades in order to be accepted to a good school to do that so I immediately was like, “Okay well, I guess I'm not going to be a doctor.”.
V: How did you feel? Did you care?
T: Yeah, I mean it made me sad but I found other ways to help people so I kind of softened the blow a little bit.
V: Did you believe that you just couldn't do it? What was your mind frame around it?
T: Yeah, I believed I couldn’t do it. I thought I didn’t have that part of my brain that would allow me to do math.
V: When you would mention that to people like your parents or teachers or friends, did anyone try to talk you out of that?
T: Yeah, for a long time I took tutoring through high school as well. I had one teacher that really pushed me to try, but I just gave up very easily. I believed if you weren’t born with that gift of remembering math or if you didn’t click with it then you're just not a math person. I just thought that's what it was; you are either a nerd or you’re an athlete. I definitely wasn’t in that box.
V: I’m so glad you brought that up, because that is literally the crux of what I do and why I have Math Therapy. I also failed grade 11 math twice because I was not put in that box and I was told I wasn’t a math person. It’s something I’m very passionate about talking about. Now, you work in radio right? So tell us a little about that, what do you do?
T: Well, it’s more so writing and researching and stuff - so I don’t really work with math too much other than time codes and stuff like that. So if there's a producer of a show, there’s time codes where you have to count down, and every show is meticulously timed out. I can’t see myself as being a show director because of being able to keep the timing and fixing, retyping the time if the host goes over. That's something that really scares me.
V: Just cause of the numbers?
T: Just because the numbers, yeah. When I worked on queue, sitting in the control room and seeing the director tell Tom, “Okay, you have this much time”, “Okay we're going to move this thing around”, and just retyping. I was just like, “Wow, how is she doing that? She must know how to do math in her head.”
V: She’s probably doing what, like subtraction?
T: Subtraction and addition.
V: Do you think you can do subtraction and addition?
T: I do, but that pressure. You know?
V: Well what I want to ask you, is right now sitting here, and I'm totally not judging you, what's 15 minus … No I’m kidding (Laughing). No, what I want to ask you is do you believe there’s such a thing as a math person?
T: Yes.
V: Okay, you do. What is a math person?
T: Somebody who can do math off the top of their head.
V: I fucking love it because everyone always says the term. I’m just realizing this now, everyone always says, “Off the top of their head”. This is exactly what people say when they say a math person, someone who can do math off the top of their head. Just for a moment everyone, let's analyze that statement. What the fuck does that mean?
T: It means you can just picture the equation and immediately see it, and know what the answer is off the top of your head. You don't even have to count or use your hands.
V: Are you talking about literally being able to do a mental calculation?
T: Yeah.
V: So a math person is someone who can do a mental calculation without even thinking about it?
T: Yeah, like photographic memory. This is how I picture it. Photographic memory and just knowing it, or maybe knowing the value of those sums.
V: I love that you’re explaining this, actually. I never had anyone really explain it. So someone just knows it. I don’t even know what you would ask me and I would just be like, “Oh I can figure that out, blah blah blah...”. I have a few questions. Is this math person born like this when they pop out of the womb?
T: That's a good question, I feel like yes and no. Half-and-half - genetically maybe they are predisposed to be a smarter individual but I feel that their environment would play a huge role in them being able to be a good math person. I feel it's just someone who's more inclined to learning, and loving math and numbers.
V: But wait, you’re saying two different things. I’m only nit-picking, I’m just breaking it down because you said this person is born smarter. Do you mean smarter at math or literally just smarter?
T: Just smarter at everything. Not even everything, maybe just more so academically. So math would be one of the things that they would be naturally good at.
V: So what if I told you that this isn’t true. No one is born generally academically smarter genetically.
T: I mean that maybe you inherit certain traits from your parents that would make it so you'd be able to digest information differently. If you had siblings, maybe one of the siblings would inherit one of the parents’ genes. If one parent was the physicist and the other parent was an artist, one of the children could inherit the physicist’s brain, or the thinking side of things. I’m not good with biology but I just feel it's something that could be slightly inherited, maybe not directly, but who knows. I think I was reading on Reddit the other day that one of the smartest people in the world is some kid from the Philippines or Vietnam or a really small country, and both of their parents are workers, like field workers.
V: So it seems kind of crazy…
T: It seems kind of crazy, exactly. What is the likelihood of this child being so smart, a prodigy when their parents aren't generally…
V: So aside from prodigies, which I think there are definitely prodigies, and that’s a pretty good argument. Generally, the role of nature is completely overemphasized. Maybe you're born with a little bit of an inclination towards something here and there. The role of nature is so much greater and you see that all the time. Do you read any Malcolm Gladwell? Have you ever read The Tipping Point or anything?
T: No.
V: Well basically, his whole theory, actually it's like proven, is that when you look at mastery athletes, when you look at Olympians, when you look at people who reach that level, the one thing they have in common is just practice hours, they have practiced whatever it is for 10,000 hours.
T: For 10,000 hours?
V: Just to be logical, not to argue with you, but I am in a way because if we say to ourselves, “It’s all genetic, I just can’t do it.”, that is so disempowering. That’s the most disempowering thing you can say. As opposed to being like, “Whatever, I went through school, a bunch of random shit happened, I didn't do well at math but actually if I had done some things differently or, more importantly, if I did some things right now differently, I'm perfectly capable of learning math.”. As an adult now do you think that I could teach you math?
T: I think you could teach me math. I would be afraid of the frustration part of it but I think you could teach it to me, yes. But I could never see myself being an advanced functions conquering…
V: But if I was like, Tamica, you’re going to move to Fort McMurray, there is nothing to do there. You are literally just going to sit for 5 hours a day and learn math, do you not think at the end of the year, you’d be pretty fucking good at math?
T: Oh, a hundred percent I would. A hundred percent.
V: Great. So we've kind of established that you are fully capable. You may choose not to, but there’s no such thing as being a math person or not, you just have to put in work.
T: Absolutely.
V: For sure some people have to put in different amounts of work. Maybe I need to do 2 hours of work and you need to do 5, but we can reach the same goal. I also think that’s what people think they’re talking about, when they say this math person thing. A lot of kids will say, “Wow, yeah I’m fine at math, but Bobby next to me put no effort in and got this mark on this test, so he’s a math person.” And you’re sort of like, A) We don’t know what the fuck Bobby is doing at home - who knows? I just challenge you to think of it that way. Not that we need to move mountains here but I think that it's important for everyone to go through their life thinking, “I'm capable of it, I can choose not to do it” but I think it's important for you to admit that if you sat and did it you’d probably be fine. If for literally a month we just worked on your mental addition and subtraction, you could probably walk in there and do it like a fucking boss.
T: You’re right. You’re basically saying if you flex the muscle more, you’d be… and it's true. When I was a kid, if you weren’t automatically good at something, if you weren’t automatically good at throwing a football, or math, or remembering history facts, then you just weren't good at it.
V: How nuts is that!?
T: The attitude I’ve adopted, and maybe a lot of other people, is that if I’m not good at it, I’m just not good at it. No one really thinks, “If I try harder at it or just keep doing it…”
V: But that makes sense.
T: It makes so much sense.
V: When people are like, “It’s bootie season!”, everyone is literally working on their booties every fucking day. (Laughing) They are right!? You’re not born being thick as fuck, that’s not what happens, a little baby is not born like that. Anyways, this belief, do you think this has prevented you from doing things in your life, the belief that you're incapable of doing math?
T: Yes, again maybe applying for jobs where I would have to count backwards and stuff like that. I’ve kind of put myself in a box since high school so I've always been kind of afraid to, unless somebody was like, “Hey! You should do this!”, a lot of the times I might think, “I don't know if I can do it”, because what if my responsibilities include payroll or that kind of stuff, which gives me anxiety because if you mess something up, people are goin to be mad at you, or just think you’re stupid. I would rather people not think of me at all than think I'm stupid. Which is actually kind of disempowering again as you said before.
V: Well I think it’s cool actually to be talking about this because what most people don't realize is that a lot of the math you're scared of, let’s say we’re talking about payroll, or talking about counting backwards. It’s simple math you could learn in two days. I guarantee you, knowing you for the short amount of time that I have, you could learn it. So it’s not even a question you could learn it. I think that's a really important thing because that has the potential to change your life.
You’re 29, which is a really exciting time. You're about to go into the big 3 0, okay I don't know why that's so exciting but I feel like this could be life-changing because my philosophy is always, I don’t give a shit if you do math, I really don’t. But I really care if you're going through the planet being like there's this thing I can't do and that's kind of the end of it like you said. I feel like you’re so self aware; “I put myself in this box, this prevents me from doing this, that, and the other thing”. But what if you just took yourself out of the box? That doesn’t mean you need to do calculus, it means you can start applying for jobs, or thinking about positions where there's a little bit of math required. You are for sure capable of that.
T: I just feel like because I have ADHD, it's always been, “I can't”. It's a learning disability, so you are going to have a really hard time learning how to do things and so I've always kind of thought that or I'm just going to have a really hard time learning.
V: The real truth is you're not really at a disadvantage. The way our society is structured now with shit constantly flashing in your face, everyone has attention deficit.
T: It’s true, these apps do not help at all.
V: No! Being aware that I learn differently, I need different methods to focus, that can actually be a superpower. It's more harmful to not know that about yourself at all - you're fully as capable as anyone else I know of learning math. But that’s so interesting, I want you to never think of that as something that's stopping you. Look at all the things you’re doing.
T: I know, again it’s that box. I need to get out of that mentality. I definitely do think I can learn math. I know I can, you’re right.
V: Yeah! Can you tell me this Aritzia story because I like it and I want it somewhere in the podcast.
T: Oh right! Oh my goodness, yes okay. So, I recently went shopping a few months ago and I got these two blazers. You know Aritzia, when they say there’s a sale and there's not really a sale. It’s like $5 off, here you go, here’s the tax. It added up to $500 and I got 3 things.
V: Oh my god!
T: But then I was too afraid to say, “Actually I don't want this”, so I just bought it anyway.
V: Did you return it?
T: No, I didn’t. I wore this Aritzia sweater sometimes, I’ll wear it and be like, “I don’t even like this, it doesn’t even match me.”. It was like one of those things where looking at the numbers, I thought it totally makes sense, I think I know what percentage off this is. I think that 30% of 83 is …
V: I’m not even asking. I want you to do it, what do you think it is, approximately?
T: 30% off of $83… I want to take $30 off of 80 but I know that's not it.
V: Okay, but it's not that far. I mean it’s not the strategy you should use, at all. (Laughing). In this case you’re not that far away from it, it would be about 24 or 25. What strategy were you using there?
T: I felt like it was 30$ off.
V: What would 30% of 800 be though? Would you still take $30 off?
T: I would take like $300 off.
V: Oh my God! For someone who's like I have no fucking clue what's going on, you kind of have a clue. You just knew you should add two more zeros to that number, one more zero, sorry everyone. (Laughing) You kind of had an idea what was happening.
T: I guess I can add things up. What I do when I grocery shop, I’ll add up the amount, and because it’s food I know certain things don’t have tax which makes my life a little bit easier. But going clothing shopping, I'll try to add things up, but I'm always off. It’s one of those things where I have anxiety like, oh my God I see this huge number, I’m just going to pay for it and deal with it later. And then I just won’t deal with it, because it gives me more anxiety.
V: Do you feel like this is interfering with your life at all?
T: My fear of math? I feel like it does.
V: Are you going broke?
T: (Laughing) Yes, a hundred percent. When my roommate told me that the landlord was raising the rent, I was like “Oh my God by how much?”. It was nothing, like 20 bucks. It’s also me doing a budget - I don’t have a set budget, which is bad. I'll do my budget in my head which is not good. So it's one of those things again, because I'm afraid of seeing all these numbers on a piece of paper, I kind of push things to the side and try to deal with it later but then just dealing with it later means struggling later.
V: So often people will say, “I was never good at math in high school, I couldn't do it”, or “I’m not a math person, but who gives a fuck I never need to use it now.” What I find fascinating is you’ve just laid out so many examples of how you need it now. Most people are often like, “When am I going to use trig?”, and I’m like hey dummy, it's not that you're going to use fucking trig, it's that you're literally going to freak out when you see numbers and refuse to engage with them and that means what you said, you won’t even do a budget because you don't want to deal with it so you’re maybe going broke, not sure what’s happening with your financing. We should get Bruce Sellery, one of our previous guests to come help you.
Or it means you might not apply for a job where simple math is involved. It does kind of hurt your life to walk through it feeling like you simply can't do math because it prevents you from engaging with all of these things. Especially the job thing, or feeling pressured into buying something for $500, I don’t like that. It’s actually so funny because every single example you gave me is just percentages. It’s one math concept that I think we learn in grade 4, so you could just learn it.
T: Yeah, the decimal…
V: See! You even know! Do you know how to calculate a tip?
T: You move the decimal over twice, or once, right? And then I just add two or three more dollars.
V: Always two or three more dollars!? What if the bill was $1000?
T: Oh no! You know what I mean! I always use the percentage, so I do 18 or 20, and I use that button.
V: Oh you tip 18% or 20%? Big tipper!
T: Yeah, because I have also worked in the service industry.
V: 20% would be easy because you just move the decimal place once to get 10%, and then what would you do, if it’s 20% instead of 10%? You would just multiply it by two.
T: Okay, multiply.
V: I think you could do this! Let’s just do a quick one. My most empowering tip is the tip trick. I tip 15% and I feel like a fucking loaf right now.
T: I do it just because I’ve been a server and all that kind of stuff. But if I buy one beer, I do the $1 rule.
V: Okay but 18% is a little much, we’re not going to calculate 18% that's ridiculous. Should we go down to 15%? It’s either 15% or 20%.
T: 15%, yeah.
V: Both of them are easy tricks. I want something with a 5 or 0, not an 8. We’re not advanced. So let’s say we want 15%. You go out, you buy something. It’s going to be $120 - I don’t know what the fuck you just had but its $120 and you need to leave a tip of 15%. What is your first step?
T: So 15%, we’re not doing debit, we're paying cash…
V: We’re paying cash, it’s $120. I’m going to tell you what to do. I want you to tell me what 10% of that is.
T: I'm going to move the decimal twice so I’m going to say it's $20… so 40? 40 sounds like a lot...
V: (Laughing) Hold on, hold on, I love you. Also we’re not using any paper which is really mean. Let me use paper, this is actually rude of me. Okay look, it’s $120. How many zeros does 10 have in it?
T: One.
V: So you’re only moving the decimal place over once. So we’re going over to here. Are we done? We’re done this step. How much do we have here?
T: 12.
V: So we have $12, that's 10%. We want 15%, so we now need another 5%. What should we logically do with this number that is 10%.
T: Um… Times it by… three?
V: This is the 10% and we need an additional 5%. What is 5’s relationship to 10? It’s half of 10. So I just want to divide this by 2. So this is my 10%, and that divided by 2 is my 5%. Are you following me?
T: Yes.
V: Here’s my 5% and there’s my 10% so I have 12 plus 6. Does that make sense?
T: Oh, cool. Okay. Yes it does, absolutely. That’s so much better than what I was doing.
V: I don’t know what you were doing.
T: (Laughing) I would just move the decimal over and add a little bit more change on top of it.
V: (Laughing) It was kind of fascinating… 40 Bucks!?
T: I would literally move the decimal over and then if it didn’t look right I would just add a few more bucks on top.
V: So that’s not exactly math per se. That’s like freestyling it. I don’t even know if I taught this to you the best way, but I like tip because it teaches you two things. Number one, 10% - you did that very easily. You were like one zero, move the decimal place. But then it’s what to do with the extra 5%, but wait, that's half of 10. So shouldn’t I just take half that number, and together I have 15.
T: So I didn’t know the second step.
V: That’s fine, most people wouldn’t know that, because you wouldn’t think about it. The idea of feeling confident with math is having an idea of how the numbers fit together. So even to think 15 is really just 10 and then another half of 10 stuck together. Even if you use this a couple times in your life now and just did it, you would just be able to do it. You could impress your friends out. They might be like “You’re a really bad tipper”, like 15%.
T: (Laughing) No, no. 15 plus…
V: A couple extra dollars. Throw another $40 on that.
T: You know that it’s happened where I’ve overtipped people a lot.
V: This might save you a lot of money.
T: I’m going to take this piece of paper and put it in my wallet.
V: Maybe I’ll make it nicer for you. I’m going to make you a nice tip note after. So yeah, I feel like we just saved you 100 bucks this week. In all honesty, I think It’s awesome how honest you are willing to be, because the truth is most people I know are like this. You mentioned that you might want to learn math - tell me a bit about that. Would you actually be interested in getting better at math? If so, why?
T: I want to get better, of course I want to be better about math because again if I look at my life right now, there's a lot of responsibilities that I've avoided because I am not good at math and then even just time management is another thing with numbers and learning. It took me a long time how to tell time as a kid. Learning when people say “half past” or “quarter to” gave me anxiety, so learning on an analog clock instead of a digital.
Time management, my finances, all these things that have to do with numbers. It would definitely take a lot of frustration out of my life if I did learn math or relearn math. Especially coming and talking about it today, I've realized it. Earlier I thought, “What am I going to talk about? Yeah, I’m bad at math”. I’m an adult now, I was even thinking about it while I was taking a shower yesterday, I remember saying in high school, “Yeah when are we ever going to need to know math, Mr.P?”. For sure I would say if I relearned math I would be in a different place a year from now.
V: I feel like we need to teach you math. What's so interesting is I think you need to learn to learn two math things. I feel like if you got comfortable with percentages, which you already are a bit, and if you whipped up your mental math a little, you would just feel better. It’s about showing yourself; the percentage thing hardly took you any time, and I’m also teaching you on a podcast, without paper. So imagine what you could do with an actual tool.
It’s so funny that idea, “When are we ever going to use this?”. It's so fucking annoying kids are like, “When are we going to use this? There’s no point.” Let me ask you this, when are you going to use Shakespeare? When are you going to use art?
T: Shakespeare, I could argue, dating profiles now.
V: Oh my god, what is your profile like? What does it say if you’re using Shakespeare?
T: I don’t use Shakespeare. I’m just saying, you know when you want to sound smooth.
V: I was going to say when are you going to use French, but that actually has a practical application that you can think of. My point is, math, or Shakespeare, all these things are just ways of building your brain muscle. Your brain is a kaleidoscope, they're all different lenses which you view the world with.
When you go to buy that thing at Aritzia, you can think artistically by thinking, “This looks cool blah blah blah”, you can think historically perhaps and think about the different figures who have worn this… I’m really bullshitting right now but I think it’s working. And you can think mathematically to be like, “Is this really worth it in the context of what I need in the rest of my life?”. Those are all different ways to evaluate the same problem which is, “Should i buy this fucking $300 blazer?”.
T: One thing I was going to say that you did touch on briefly was the anxiety, and I feel like if teachers were to reply to students when they ask, “When are we going to use this?”, with “Maybe you think you won’t use this now, but it's more so about you not having anxiety as an adult.”. If my math teachers were to say something like that in high school I might have viewed it differently or at least had it in the back of my mind as something I would possibly use later instead of brushing it off and being like, “You're going to be sorry when you don't know how to do this stuff.”. Or, “Don't question it, just shut up and do the work.”, because nobody told me you're going to have anxiety if you don't know how to do this stuff.
V: I love it, actually that leads right into the question I was going to ask you. That’s cool because no one has ever said that, no one has really expressed the fact that perhaps if it were framed that way, you would be thinking differently because we normally don't think of math as something emotional. You think of it as something logical like, “You're going to be sorry because you're not going to be able to get this job”, but not “You're going to be sorry because you're literally going to lose a piece of confidence that you won't be able to get back”, or that you'll be stressed out or have anxiety. I think that’s really important. We kind of have to wrap up but this has been so awesome and I feel like you should come for a tutoring session.
T: Absolutely, I’m definitely up for it.
V: I think it would be cool, just to learn literally one thing. You probably don’t know much about the educational system now just because you’re not in it, but I'll tell you one of the biggest changes is they stopped basically teaching the times tables to kids. This has happened over the past decade, it kind of stopped. There's all these different methods for teaching multiplication that involve moving around piles of stuff, to see… Whatever! We call it discovery learning.
So we have an entire generation of kids, millions of kids, who actually don't know multiplication off the top of their head as you would say. I'm just trying to prove my point that there's no such thing as a person who can do it - we never taught it to them. They've learned something completely different, so millions of kids who can't do it doesn't mean they're not math people, they were just taught in a different way. Whereas the millions of kids before this decade could all do their timetables, right? So it's not like all of a sudden we’ve stopped popping out math people, we are teaching generations in a different way and not the way they learn or whatever, and I really want to get away from the idea that you're simply not the type of person. It is very possible that you didn't get the support. Maybe you were working hard but not smart for you.
T: I feel like I can learn math now, especially when you frame it like anybody can learn anything, you just have to take the time and the effort, the effort…
V: The effort! Yeah!
T: ... is a huge part of the equation in learning something new.
V: (Cheering) She made a math pun, oh my god she’s a new person! Let me ask you the last two questions I ask everyone. Number one: If you could pick one thing, what would you change about the way math is taught in schools?
T: I would say maybe having more of a physical way or tactile way of learning it. Not necessarily moving stuff around, maybe teachers being more hands-on with the way kids learn, or being more enthusiastic. I remember learning the times tables. The way I had to learn was sitting at dinner, I didn’t like a lot of the food because I was picky - growing up west Indian I didn't want to eat ackee. My mom was like, “Okay if you're going to sit here for hours and not finish your food, you have to learn or memorize this and then you don't have to finish that.”. If I memorized the nine times tables, I didn't have to finish the rest of what was on my plate. I don't know if they can do that in schools...
V: (Laughing) It’s 2020 I don’t think so.
T: I feel like it's more of an attitude, I feel like if we had teachers that were more enthusiastic and just encouraging, then it would change the mindset of things. I haven't been in a long time but even when I was in school teachers weren't as enthusiastic, and I had to pay to go to school, it wasn’t even like I went to public school. So your parents are paying for you to be there and you still don’t get that quality time and stuff like that.
V: Attitude, eh? That’s a big one.
T: Yeah, attitude.
V: Now, this is going to be a big question for you, because I feel like we’ve been through a lot. I'm going to rephrase it to, “What are you going to say next time someone says to you that they're not a math person?”. You can be honest, you don't have to say what you think I want to hear, what do you think you're going to say?
T: I would say I thought the same thing about myself but it turns out if you actually went and tried to relearn math and you actually put in the amount of effort you do in anything that you love you could become a math person. Or actually, you are a math person you just don't know it yet.
V: (Cheering) I didn't even pay her to say this guys. Do you think you're going to honestly say that?
T: Yeah for sure! You’re right, when you say the effort and when you phrase it like that it's true.
V: Tamica this has been amazing.
T: Thank you so much, I feel so much lighter right now. I know how to do percentages so I won't be overtipping.
V: I’m going to make you a nicer note for tipping. You know what you should do almost, this could be such a fun game. Whenever you're about to give a tip do whatever you would do normally and write that amount down, then do the actual calculation and whatever you save put in a jar and at the end of the month, see how much money you save.
T: That's a good idea
V: And by the end, you'll actually estimate it actually closer but that could be interesting to know. Imagine if you save hundreds of dollars you can go to Aritzia and buy a $300 blazer...
T: I’m never buying anything from there again. Only something that’s functional like a winter coat, but never again am I spending that much on sweaters.
V: It’s ridiculous. What is it made out of? Gold?
T: It’s not! It’s a blend!
V: That’s ridiculous… Thanks so much for being here.
T: Thanks so much for having me. I had a lot of fun.
V: Me too!
V: Guys are you crying or what? Honestly oh my god, I wish I was like Ellen or whatever and I could be like, “Okay Tamica, guess what? We're going to move you to a tropical island for a year to learn all that math you never thought you could understand. Also here is a million dollars, and also Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting is going to be your teacher.”. I don't know... Whatever Ellen would do in this situation, you know what I mean? Or maybe I’m thinking of Oprah.
The point is, it's so amazing what a little math therapy can do. I really hope that Tamica still has that little sticky note in her wallet and is just out there calculating the perfect tip and impressing all her friends. That is a wrap on the first episode of season 2. We've got nine more juicy episodes to go and each of them are totally different and super mind blowing in their own way.
You can find links to everything we talked about in this episode on our show notes at themathguru.ca/maththerapy. Follow us on all social media @themathguru for more math therapy and just more of me. Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia, aka The Math Guru, produced by Sabina Wex, and edited by David Kochberg. Our theme song is “Waves” by my band, Goodnight, Sunrise. And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or just needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please share this podcast and write a quick review on whatever podcast app you use. Those two things make a huge, huge difference. I am so determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help, so spread the word. That's all for this week, stay tuned for our next episode out next Thursday.