Math Class: Stories about adventures in math education

This week we present two stories from the math classroom.

Part 1: High school math whiz Tori Ball has always hoped a boy would fall in love with her mind, but when it finally happens, she's not sure how she feels.

Tori Ball is a high school math teacher in Rockville, Maryland. She spends her days taking derivatives, graphing parabolas, and making young people giggle when she says the word "asymptote." Back when she was a high school student in Rockville, Maryland, Tori's antics on the morning announcements earned her the nickname "Tori with the Story" - a moniker that remains appropriate to this day. Tori has shared stories on stage in DC with Story District, the Moth, and Perfect Liar's Club - and is excited for her Story Collider debut!

Part 2: High achieving, but superstitious college student Maryam Zaringhalam’s entire system collapses when she misses a calculus test.

Maryam is a molecular biologist who traded in her pipettes for the world of science policy and advocacy. She comes to D.C. from the concrete jungles of New York, where she received her PhD from The Rockefeller University. She co-hosts the science policy podcast Science Soapbox, and her words have appeared in Slate, Scientific American, and Quartz. Her cat is named Tesla, after Nikola and not Elon Musk's car. For insights like this and more, follow her on Twitter @webmz_

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Tori Ball

One of the most dramatic emotional breakdowns of my early adolescence occurred in a Kentucky Fried Chicken, which I remember because, even as a 14-year-old, I was acutely aware of how absurd it was to be throwing a temper tantrum in front of Colonel Sanders.

I was whining to my mother that none of the boys in my grade found me attractive and I'd never have a boyfriend. And my mom had responded, “Oh, honey, you don't want any of them. Teenage boys are disgusting. They're all just desperately trying to have sex with anything.”

It was at this moment that I started crying uncontrollably. “You think I'm ugly?” I screamed at my shell-shocked mother.

“Wait. Honey, what? What did I say?”

“I told you that none of the boys in my grade even wanted to make out with me and you said that they would have sex with literally anything, therefore you must think that I am uglier than literally everything.”

My poor mother set down her chicken wing and she tried to clarify she'd only meant that boys my age weren't known for having particularly refined tastes. “You know, you might not be what they're interested in right now, Tori, but eventually, boys will start noticing you for how smart and interesting you are. Eventually, someone amazing will see all that's amazing in you.”

Tori Ball shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Bier Baron Tavern in Washington DC in December 2019. Photo by Lisa Helfert.

This was familiar advice to me. If you're a girl who's not sort of conventionally beautiful, you hear this message a lot from well-meaning parents and teachers and others. The message is pretty girls, they're a dime a dozen. But you, the smart girl, you are unique. Eventually, there will come a magical day when a boy lays eyes on you and says, “Oh, thank God I finally made it through the tangled thicket of pretty girls and found you, the one girl who truly understands logarithms.”

So as a 14-year-old, I put a lot of hope in ‘eventually’. I looked forward to leaving middle school and entering into high school, that great bastion of maturity and intellectualism. And lucky me, I wasn't headed to just any high school. Oh, no. I had been deemed gifted.

I had been accepted into an elite magnet high school where I would be interacting with the best and brightest. I'd be in rarified air and would finally be noticed for the majestic erudite goddess that I am. But it turns out that entering into a fancy high school for gifted kids does not guarantee you will suddenly be noticed for how uniquely intelligent you are. In fact, it almost certainly guarantees you won't be noticed on that front because everyone around you is also extremely intelligent. And as I came to notice, a lot of those really smart girls were still much prettier than me.

So, my insecurities did not fade away immediately upon entrance into high school, which isn't to say I didn't have a good experience. I made great friends. I developed... yeah, some of them are right here, everybody. I developed a passion for science and mathematics and music but I still wasted a lot of time worrying about whether anyone would ever find me attractive.

Then, junior year, into my life walked Stan. Stan was, by any measure, an odd dude. I have to imagine that upon enrolling in a magnet high school, Stan had thought to himself, “Yes, nerd central. Maybe I won't be the weirdest guy in the grade.” But Stan was definitely still the weirdest guy in the grade.

Stan and I were seated next to each other in Computer Science class and Stan was one of those guys who's really into computers. After school, while all the other late-‘90s teenagers were watching TRL, Stan was independently studying AI and trying to figure out how to hack into stuff. He was always working way ahead of the rest of our CS class.

So, when we first started learning about graphics, it came as no surprise that he was already creating complex animations. While my screen displayed a humble circle and triangle, he had colorful words rotating around the monitor in 3D. What did come as a surprise were the words that Stan had chosen to animate. “Tori, Tori, Tori, Tori, Tori, Tori.”

Stan's program was a whirling, twirling tribute to me. When Stan saw me eyeing his program, he smiled. “I hope you like it,” he said. “I've noticed that you are very good at coding.”

I examined Stan quizzically, like he wasn't one of those boys who normally paid any attention to girls, but there he was staring at me with puppy-dog eyes. Stan was smitten. He'd seen me skillfully nest some while loops and he was sold.

Stan started treating us as an item of sorts. We never interacted outside of school or even outside the computer lab, really, but each day when I'd arrived to class he'd tell me how happy he was to see me. Then he'd compliment me on how elegant my code was.

So this was it, guys. This was the moment my mother had promised me. A young man had taken an interest in me for my mind, and it was really, really weird. I guess I had just imagined things going differently. I had thought that a boy would suddenly notice how smart I was and then take an interest in all of me, but Stan didn't want to talk about my hopes and dreams. All Stan ever wanted to talk about was object-oriented programming.

That year for Valentine's Day, our student council offered a rose delivery service. For a few dollars, you could fill out a card and have a rose delivered to your sweetheart in class. So the card had space for you to write a little love note and then there were lines where you could note the recipient’s name and their first period teacher and then what color of rose you wanted to send them.

I received a rose in class that simply said, “Name: Tori. First Period Teacher: Mr. Erly. Rose Color: Default” For anybody who's curious, the default rose color is in fact red.

So, I really didn't know what to do about Stan. I definitely did not like him back but I did really like being special in someone's eyes. So I made sure everybody saw that rose I'd gotten as if the other guys were going to think, “Huh, someone's advancing on Tori. Perhaps she is a mate worth pursuing.”

The next year, Stan and I were enrolled in the same AP Statistics course and, friends, if you thought I was hot while programming, I am smoking when taking a standard deviation. In truth, I really was good at math as a teenager and I really wanted to be noticed for it. In this sea of brilliant people with whom I went to high school, it felt like an area where I could stand out.

My AP Statistics teacher would start each day with a warm-up problem on the board and I would volunteer almost every day to put my answer up on the board. Like having my work on public display it made me feel good. What gave me more mixed emotions was how Stan would respond.

Without fail, when I would finish doing my work, he would stand up at his desk and applaud for me. He also started bringing me gifts. So every now and then I'd get to class and I'd notice a little trinket on my desk. One day, it was a microprocessor chip. Another day, it was an article on string theory. My quantitative prowess had landed me a bona fide suitor.

And it also put me in a tricky position. Typically, when someone's romantically interested in someone else, you will either accept or reject their advances and things will proceed from there. But with Stan, I'd gotten myself into an infinite loop. I was never going to go out with him, but I also loved the attention too much to shoo him away, so he just kept trying and trying and trying and trying, ramping up his efforts to impress me.

That year, the day before Valentine's Day, Stan approached me and casually asked if he could borrow my calculator. I was sort of surprised by the request and that it was hard to imagine Stan ever being without a calculator of his own. I was also caught off guard when, upon handing over my TI-83, Stan took off running and disappeared.

But I got my calculator back the next day. It was sitting there on my desk with a note on it imploring me to check out the battery pack. And there it was, the most romantic gift I have ever received.

Stan had installed a variable speed knob on my calculator so if I was going to graph a particularly complicated equation or run an intricate program, I could turn up the juice and it would go faster. But if I was just engaging in basic computation, I could turn things down and conserve battery life.

Stan was not messing around. He had turned the knob all the way up in declaring his love for me and still I wasn't reciprocating.

Stan and I ended up not having any classes together the second semester of senior year and he mostly just faded out of my life. There was a certain amount of relief that came with that but also a bit of emptiness.

The next year, when I started college and desperately tried to find social validation in a new environment, I found myself missing those daily reminders of specialness that I would get from Stan. And when other engineering students would admire my doctored-up calculator, I would swell with pride thinking about how much someone had once cared for me.

Over fall break, I went to visit a friend at the University of Maryland and she informed me that Stan actually lived in the same dorm as her. So I stopped by his room just to say hello, and he asked if I would go out for dessert with him.

He told me all about the CS classes he was taking as we made our way across campus towards the dining hall and then, in front of a pastry case full of tarts and doughnuts, he leaned in close to me, pointed towards the éclair and whispered in my ear, “I think you'll enjoy tasting the long, cream-filled one.”

That evening was the last time I saw Stan. My mother was right. I did eventually find people who valued me for my mind, but she was right about something else as well. Teenage boys are in fact incredibly disgusting.

Part 2: Maryam Zaringhalam

So I’m laying across my mom’s lap watching another Saturday afternoon marathon of Law and Order SVU and there's tears coming down my face. But I’m not crying because of anything that’s happening on the screen. No. All of these marathons have rendered me disturbingly desensitized to all kinds of truly horrific things. Instead, I’m crying because my mom has commenced hacking away at the ginormous blackhead taking up a sizeable chunk of real estate across my nose.

She has decided that this monstrosity is her sworn enemy and she must vanquish it at all costs. And so away she goes digging her fingers, nails into the thin flesh of my nose, and it fucking hurts. She's been doing this on and off for months now and I've learned better than to let out a protest lest she hit me with another “Bokosh o khoshgelam kon.” Kill me but make me beautiful. I love you, mom.

And her efforts have largely been unsuccessful until today. Today, as I’m watching detective’s Benson and Stabler exchange meaningful eye contact on the screen, as they're wont to do, my mom lets out a victorious whoop which startles me and sends me on my feet staring at her. And there, at the tip of her finger, I see it. The solidified gunk that had once been deeply embedded in my nose.

And my pain tears they turn to real tears, like sadness tears. That blackhead had been with me for six months. It had sprung across my nose when I had first started junior high. It was one of those really juicy blemishes that pops up because of stress at inopportune moments like major life transitions where you're starting at a new school wondering who your friends are going to be and how you're going to do in class.

And at the risk of sounding too braggy, I was crushing the seventh grade, acing my tests in a way that I never had before. And in my head, it’s all because of this blackhead. That in its grotesque hideousness it had brought me good fortune. My lucky blemish.

Maryam Zaringhalam shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Bier Baron Tavern in Washington DC in October 2018. Photo by Lauren Lipuma.

And there it is, sitting, all of my luck, my hopes and dreams at the tip of my mom’s finger. And she's smiling up at me with joy in her eyes having no idea what she's just done. And me in my horror and grief, all of a sudden a stroke of genius pops into my head and I think I can bag that luck.

So I transfer the blackhead from my mom’s finger to my own very quickly, before she suspects anything, and I run off to the kitchen where I retrieve a plastic bag, gingerly place the blackhead into the bag, zip it up, and run up to my room, stash it in my little lucky trinket box that I keep on my nightstand so that its good luck can live on in perpetuity. Yeah.

As my school years go on, I take my PSATs and my SATs and my AP exams and I start to collect more and more little tokens. Like I keep the wrapper of a chocolate bar that I ate right before I crushed a test particularly hard.

And I start to develop these sorts of good luck-rituals too. Like I suss out the right gel pen colors to use to elicit the best scores on an exam. Like red for math or green for history or blue for biology.

And I start to sleep the night before a test with my notes under my pillow so that I can absorb all of that knowledge sitting in there into my brain so I’m ready for a test.

And on the day of the test, I stand outside the classroom waiting for a classmate that I deemed smart enough to enter so that I can follow afterwards and transfer all of that brain power energy into my own head.

When I finally go off to college I decide I’m going to leave my lucky trinket box at home because I don't want to disturb the good luck energy that’s been building over the years. But I do take my rituals with me.

As the years have gone on, they start to take up a substantial chunk of my time and energy. I have to get to class an hour or two before an exam starts so I can do all of the little things, make all of the little arrangements that I need to make in order to make sure that I ace the test. My future depends on it.

And it’s all paying off beautifully. My tests aced. Homework, aced. Essays, aced. I’m like a well-oiled machine. And before I know it, finals week is upon me and I have my system down to a T. I get to prepping and all is going so great until Friday, the Friday before exam week commences. I open up my inbox and I see an email with the subject line, Reminder: Calculus Exam TODAY at 2:00 P.M.

It’s 5:00 p.m. and I've missed the test. Holy shit, I missed the test. How could I possibly have missed the test? I flip open my planner and I started frantically flipping through the pages and there I see it. Tuesday. Tuesday of next week in calculus red ink, exam. And I look back at the email and it’s not making sense. I feel my knees go noodly and my legs buckle and I sink to the ground and I start crying, ugly crying to the point where I’m hyperventilating.

Hyperventilating to the point where I’m dry heaving. Dry heaving to the point where I’m making such a ruckus that my roommate, Jo, comes running into the room. She finds me in the corner, my head between my knees in the throes of a full-fledged panic attack.

She rushes to my side and starts patting me on the back waiting for my breathing to come down and waiting for me to stop crying so frantically.

Finally, she asks, “What the fuck happened here?” which is exactly what the fuck I’m wondering.

How could this possibly happen? I have a system. This can’t be. And I’m thinking, and I’m thinking and, oh, maybe it’s possible that the professor said something about having to move the test up because of a family thing and, oh, that could have been the same day that I ran out of calculus red ink. But I surely would have remembered to change the date. Oh, fuck, I didn’t remember to change the date. And I start crying all over again.

As the tears are coming down my face, I hear Jo start laughing. And I’m confused and I turn to her thinking what the fuck kind of friend is this? Can’t she see that my life is over? This isn’t funny. And she sees how confused I look which makes her laugh even harder.

Until, finally, she slaps me because that’s the kind of friendship we have, and she says, “Maryam, do you hear yourself?”

And I realize what I just admitted to. That I missed my test because I believed that a gel pen, calculus red to be exact, was the thing that was going to make or break me. and as a result, I have totally failed to show up.

And I've never told anybody about my rituals, never said them out loud to anyone, not even myself. To hear how ridiculous it sounds that I have put all of my faith in myself, all of my faith in my abilities and my success in the color of a pen, or sleeping on top of a pile of notebooks, or this six-year-old moldy, crusty, blackhead sitting on my nightstand at home.

So I, realizing all of this, do the only thing I can think to do. I just join Jo laughing. And when we finally calm down, Jo, being the amazing roommate that she is, helps me pave things over, smooth things over with my Calc professor.

It turns out that he was always planning on dropping the lowest exam score anyway because everybody in the class had done so badly, except for me. So my panic attack was for nothing at all. The exam, it didn’t matter. And I was starting to realize that maybe my rituals and my tokens didn’t matter so much either.

A couple weeks later, I go back home for winter break and the first thing I do after setting down my bags is I run straight up to my room, straight up to my lucky trinket box and I retrieve that old, moldy, crusty blackhead and I put it where it has always belonged. Straight in the trash. Thank you.