Oh my gorsh. Blorp. Dude. Girlie. Listen. I'm so lucky to exist in this part of history. Not only has math existed for a very long time, but I also have access to millions of diffrent ways to learn the same concept via the voices (or, as boring people call it, the internet).

Some approaches to teaching math online are very intuitive, and speak to the joyful goblin in my brain that learnt Enderwalk fluently and created an actual language/grammatical system for Eridian, adapted to their biology (I should make a post about that). Both Eridian and Enderwalk are just one system on top of another on top of another—with the only real struggle being memorizing how to use the tool.

But that's the thing. Every language I know—be it something real like Spanish, or technical like Python code, or completely impossible to speak like Eridian—is just another way of articulating something. And holy shit, wouldn't you know it, the whole point of math is to explain things with numbers.

Language is just a bunch of memorized words, which are combined to create meaning through sentences (with standardizing, imagined rules we call grammar). Likewise, numbers combine to make equations and formulas, which create meaning through weird (but somehow real) rules. Math has always been a language, just one that I wasn't disciplined enough to understand (and something my teachers weren't given the time or money to help me with as I fell behind, but I'm trying to set my distaste for the American education system aside here).

I am now using this sentence to smoothly transition the topic of this blog post into an explanation of how I'm learning math. (Wow, I'm so meta).

My first instinct was to go online to Khan academy, but Khan's way of teaching—where what would be a 30 min lecture is shortened into ten 3 minute videos—sort of expects you to use the website for review. Which, as a student who chronically falls behind in math, is too hard for me. I realized I needed a change of pace, and some resource that would hold my hand with the same attentive caution you'd pay to a toddler with a walking disability. Introducing "Pre-Calc for dummies" by Mary Jane Steling! She's been nurturing me and my growing appreciation for math. Parasocial relationship who?