TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

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CLIENT: It's two days to Bloomsday.

THERAPIST: What is it?

CLIENT: June 16th. Bloomsday. So, Leopold Bloom in Ulysses. James Joyce's Ulysses. It's for people to read. It's a marathon reading of Ulysses. People who retrace the steps of him because it takes the entire day. They retrace the steps of L�opold Bloom in Dublin going around from all locations. James Joyce describes in the very beginning of the morning and now they proceed through the day.

THERAPIST: Okay, so people just go out and do that?

CLIENT: Yes. I'm obsessed with James Joyce's Ulysses.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:01:10]

CLIENT: So, today, two things. At one level I'm getting the house stuff, happily. So contemplating painting and of course with all the rain, that's a no go. I need it to be dry outside. So this morning.

THERAPIST: You're going to do exterior too.

CLIENT: Yeah. Front and back porch. Not the sides. It has vinyl siding with a little bit of asbestos removal. There's white and black with a red roof. So, front and back porch we have white storm doors, so I thought it would be nice if they were black instead. I contemplated the idea of spray paint or to paint them with a brush. The deck, the landing needs to be painted. It's in good shape, it just needs to be painted. So, I'm thinking should I paint it white? Should I paint it green? Should I paint it black? I decided on black. White rails. Had a whole discussion on how to redo the cabinets. I feel like I learned a lot about talking with these guys a little bit more about exactly what to do with kitchen cabinets. Outdoor. Whether it's oil or it's latex. How to fix the garage door. How to paint the garage door, etcetera. That's one level. [00:02:50]

I'm going to have people come and rip out the shrubs and trim two trees. It's these towering oak trees which are far higher than the house. They're probably from 1700. They figured out the trim so people are coming and giving estimates on that. So, I feel like I'm on Angie's List a lot. I'm just looking things up and then getting estimates. So, there is that level.

Then I'm reading this book. So, this is the math level. This is a publication by the Mathematical Association of America and the papers follow the conference. It's talking about reconceiving mathematics in high school, in particular algebra and pre-calculus and the way it has been taught. [00:04:00]

One of the authors is this woman who has written this really fantastic. She was at MIT for a long time. So, of all the math books that I have checked out, this is from the school of education. So I went. This is the thing. I have all these math books. Textbooks and philosophy of mathematics. Then, after seeing you last time, I went to the education school and I thought I want to read books about the teaching of mathematics because I have never read anything about it. Thinking not necessarily for my point of view of how to teach it, although that is in the back of my mind as I'm thinking. [00:05:00]

But I'm really thinking like placing myself as a student. I mean how I like would to be taught and therefore how to teach. Anyway, so this is talking about high school math and how it had been taught and what the expectations are and so forth. So, every paper here is just terrific. I've probably read a third of the book. I keep hopping around. So, I post marked these two things. Of course there's many things that you could post mark, but I thought this resonates. This is in the introductory paper. It's just talking about people who took pre-calculus or algebra in high school and then there is this situation. There's papers on this subject alone as to people who go and take placement tests. Even though they took pre-calculus in college, pardon me, pre-calculus in high school they don't do well on the placement tests and so then they get placed in college algebra which is the pre-calculus in high school and college algebra in college is the same course. [00:06:20]

What exactly is pre-calculus? What exactly is college algebra? That's the idea. I mean is it a terminal course which you seem to be left with? Or is it a course that truly is pre-calculus? If that's the case, what should one really know? Anyway, so, there is all of that being discussed in other papers.

In this paper, so mathematics instructors can readily identify with the following observation. Students who are substantially underprepared for calculus reported more conceptual problems and feelings of being overwhelmed in the early stages of their major. Not only did most of these students abandon their ambition to continue with SME, science, mathematics and engineering, they also suffered emotional damage by attempting to prove an impossible task.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Several colleges and universities have recognized the need for rethinking the precalculus curriculum and have implemented completely different approaches. Anyway, and then it goes on. [00:07:30]

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: So there is that and then this other thing. This is what I have always sort of stated, but it's interesting to hear it and to see it written by this math professor. Actually, he's a teacher. He teaches at the science and mathematics high school. It's a public boarding school where you can learn science and math.

THERAPIST: Oh yeah. I know that one. Yeah. I know somebody that went there.

CLIENT: So, here he's talking about this notion of how at the school, they have revamped precalculus where students learn how to model. They work in teams. They have to write up reports on what they discovered. They sort of discovered sort of a construction approach to teaching mathematics. They work in groups and they discover and are sort of lead along with the teacher as opposed to the teacher standing up there. Here are the rules. Figure it out. It's usually how math is done. [00:09:00]

Give them the rules and then you practice how to think and use those rules and manipulate them. So, this is what it's in juxtaposition to. Right? Often students experience this in mathematics classrooms convince them that being talented in mathematics means being able to give the expected answer quickly and with little thought. Their experiences in mathematics is that the creative responses are counterproductive and just slow the class down. Mathematical creativity takes time. Creative students must be willing to persevere when the ideas do not come easily. To stay with the problem, to refine their solutions and improve upon their less creative work. Students must be working on problems that are especially rich to allow for extended work on them and especially interesting and engaging, that they are willing to give the problems their time and intellectual energy. [00:10:00]

It talks about this idea of trying to be creative and giving them some open ended long problems that are complex. The opening part is fair enough and that's what really sticks with me. Their experiences in mathematics is that their creative responses are counterproductive and slow the class down.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: I looked back. I thought, you know, well, actually, I looked at the grids. You know, I thought was I really that bad? Somehow I had this conception like I was this horrible math student. It's like no. If I got an A...

THERAPIST: This is what? High school?

CLIENT: High school. So, I got an A in precalculus the second semester and a B+ the first semester. I was not a bad math student and granted my high school grading scale was 93 and below is a B. So, I mean I felt like I did okay. It was my production of it. There were these students in mathematics class who gave the expected answer quickly and with little thought. I was thinking I wasn't able to do that, generally. It wasn't because I was, I would not be so flattering and think well, because I am creative and always thinking differently. No. I think half the time I just didn't get it and they got it more quickly. They really were better in math. I can see that. [00:11:30]

There was that sense and the idea was and I think I indicated this with this is whatever would imply, I suppose, what it implied was that the ideal is to recognize something that is correct and be able to use it and it's self-evident as opposed to the interiority I suppose of struggle. So, simultaneous to doing mathematics and having that feeling of will they do it, they're quick at it. I am doing it and struggling and trying to figure it out, but I'm doing okay. Right? But, also, at the same time, you know, doing a lot of reading on my own. Doing math search that some kids do in high school. [00:12:45]

You know, you're reading Kendall. You're reading Choslovsky. You're reading Tolstoy and you're doing that ear search. Right? So, it's like, so it's two different worlds. There's the symbolic, pure logic form of mathematics and then there is the inner struggle of trying to figure out place in world and religion and meaning. I think you know. Maybe I am doing that because I am not so good at that and they are smarter and so I am in this world of meaning making. You know, quote unquote meaning making and there is a struggle. There is the interiority of it. So, anyway. So, there's that. [00:13:45]

So, I get to college and I think oh, I'm bad at math. So, I went and consistently put it off and switched. I mean as I have told you, I wanted to go to Stanford. I went to UC Irvine. UC Irvine has, you know, every student that goes to UC Irvine has to take one year of calculus and with Stanford it's not the case. At Stanford, you can do whatever you want. Right? Stanford's a better school but UC is the greater interest. You can do science. It's like a, you know, whatever. That's UC.

THERAPIST: Their core curriculum?

CLIENT: The core curriculum. So, I thought okay, I will do really well on something I like doing and that's going to add up. All the while, that feeling of this previous quote. These students who were feeling under prepared they had no ambition to continue with math and engineering and science. Well, I am not sure how burning it was. I am not sure how burning of a desire it was to do those things, but there was the sense of it's off the table completely. [00:15:10]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And, so, it's my only choice. If you do that there are these people who, you know, give these expected answers quickly and with little thought. Meanwhile, I am studying philosophy and social theory where you can't do those things quickly and with little thought. So, it was basically surface logic versus death and I chose death as if they were somehow, they are somehow opposite. Really true. That's how I perceived it and how I continue to perceive it in many ways.

THERAPIST: Well, I guess though that it's different in as least as much as, not that the, well, I was just thinking that there's two different kinds of thinkers or of thinking. There is thinking that comes automatically and kind of instinctively and then the thinking that you struggle with. You grapple with. You've got to work. You labor over. It was like as if to say good to do that in the humanities, but in math, that is holding you back. You're not cut out for it or something like that. That maybe you're not cut out for it. [00:16:35]

CLIENT: Yeah. It's because I value this. It's not like I poo-pooed math and science. I valued it. It's just I felt like that is something that is hard even though the first semester of college I took biology and didn't really want to but ended up doing well. Biology is different from physics and calculus which one could have easily done. Here's the thing. In retrospect, in retrospect, at the time, I didn't feel it. Maybe it's because my parents moved to New Mexico and everything else was up in the air and maybe that balanced it. That was the context. [00:17:30]

But, intellectually thinking there is no reason in the world I couldn't have gone to college and just did a year of calculus. Now, it was an inclination, but I could have done that and yet I didn't have time. That's another thing that the papers build up and talk about. It's the notion of all mathematics in high school leads up and we know that kids take A B and C. Take two years. (inaudible) And then they take linear algebra their senior year. Anyway, there's those. [00:18:30]

The idea is that precalculus, the very name suggests that you do this so you can take that. That is the goal. The goal of all mathematics. There is the sense of that all mathematics prior to that is just truly preparation. When you get to calculus you are finally doing real math. Of course, the feeling is, I know what the reality is, I think. They say this and most of them have experience with it. When you do it, it's great and it's neat and you can do stuff and that's great. Of course, you do the algebra to get to the calculus, the calculus class, but there's not a big payoff. There's not the sense of oh my God, wow. There's satisfaction in the class, but it's not like oh, this has replaced all previous math and now I can do everything.

THERAPIST: Oh. Okay.

CLIENT: No. You can do calculus problems. That is what you can do. The fact of the matter is that many real substantial problems of real importance don't need calculus. So, this idea of you're preparing and preparing for this course. No. You know? I mean. Anyway, so they talk about that and they give these tables of most people in college. [00:20:00]

Now MIT obviously I mean is clearly the exception and MIT is clearly the exception, but they looking at universities in general. The course that most people take and stop at is college algebra and precalculus because that is a prerequisite for other majors, so it is this terminus course. Roughly a sixth of the people who take precalculus in college then of the people who take it will take calculus. So, in this neck of the woods, you do it in college for sure. What do you do? Take calculus as a freshman in college. Clearly that's not true because there's a lot of calculus courses. [00:21:00]

So, it's a special area. That's actually not the case. Right? Anyway, so think about this. Then, there is this issue too. So, Jessica didn't want to come out for Christmas and Katie is managing a pizza shop and she loves it. She likes it. She can't stand school. All she wants to do is work at the pizza shop and be in a rock band where she plays guitar.

THERAPIST: How old is she now?

CLIENT: 19. Or, is she 19? No, she's 18. She's 18. Of course, she's 18. She graduated early. No interest in school. No interest whatsoever. I thought this is strange. Here she is, this true genius kid and it's like she sort of pissed away high school because she couldn't stand it. [00:22:00]

But, realizing because of Crohn's and also just because of life in general she has got to go to college. She has to go to college so she has insurance. She has to go to college because of a college degree. It's sort of like, if she's not really in the mood for it now, I mean there's no problem in taking a year off. Right? So, there's not the feeling like she's got to do it, she's got to do it. From an insurance point of view, in the fall, she has to go to college. Fact. But, she doesn't want to go to college in Arizona, so I am going to talk to her about this. My dad, I was talking to him yesterday, and he said I am just a grandpa. I just let him and her mom talk about it and then once they figure something out, they tell me. He's like all I do is take care of the dogs. I said well, he said she has no interest in going to school in Arizona. Arizona now has New Mexico State and it has a community college. [00:23:10]

It has Northern New Mexico University which has a satellite campus. So, basically, she could go to ASU, MCC or any in Arizona. She doesn't want to do any of those. Of course, it's a small town so everyone knows everybody. She just wants to get the hell out. Right? She's happy doing the pizza thing. She likes it. She's good at it. She digs working and she's very conscientious. She's just like in high school wasn't a good student. She wasn't a good student. That's not good. I said, I said well, I guess you will have to go to community college and get good grades and transfer and he said no, she's a good student. He said oh, she had a 3.8. [00:24:00]

Really? She could care less about it. I mean she just, she reeks of it. Really, she's dressed in black and plays her part in a rock band, right? I mean she's musical. She plays all these instruments. I have no doubt that she's probably pretty good in math. So, I think it's interesting. If I were in a class with Katie she might be one of those kids who's just like looks at it.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Quickly and easily.

CLIENT: Right. Meanwhile she's dressed in black with chains. She likes it. Whatever. The rocker chick. As a kid, I don't know. If I were her age, I mean how is Katie doing this?

THERAPIST: Yeah. Right. Right. [00:25:00]

CLIENT: I guess I projected a lot thinking well, if Katie was sort of going through that phase about just like not caring about anything, although her mom says she has never cared about school. She has never been competitive. She doesn't get in to being competitive. So, I thought she was going through this phase of just being disaffected then clearly she couldn't go to one school. Right? That is how I felt and I went through the phase of not doing so well. Right? Getting some C's for a year.

THERAPIST: What year was that?

CLIENT: Sophomore. I got a C in Spanish. You know. It was just like a first, right? You know, somehow I assumed that was the case for Katie. I guess the only really bad, well not really bad, is she got a single C in shop. It's this work of art. Right? She had to build this chest. This like jewelry box of sorts. She deliberately made this Frankenstein thing that has a nail sticking out in every direction so it's really dangerous trying to even open it. The current shop teacher thought she was like taking a piss and gave her a bad grade. She's was like, she goes it works. It's just you need to be careful. (laughter) There's a nail sticking out of it. [00:26:30]

That's the thing. She doesn't really care. She's like whatever. She doesn't really care about the grade. You know what my sister's like. You have to fight this. You've got to do something. You can't sit in shop. Now it sits on the piano at home. It's this box with nails sticking out. It's a source of great amusement. So, she doesn't want to be in Arizona and I'm thinking alright she's always welcome to hang out in Waltham. She's lived there for a long time. She can come here. Experience Waltham and be in the city for the first time. [00:27:30]

Which makes me happy, right? So, I'm thinking about her somehow being in the city and liking it and being out of Arizona and all of a sudden having that feeling of there are things to do and going to school can actually be interesting. You can actually take classes that you like. I'm thinking about her. Somehow I put on her this notion of she's probably struggling with things. She's smart and it's just that she got behind. She was a good student contrary to her complete disinterest. [00:28:30]

So, there is that and then the other thing. So, yesterday, Barbara was away until 8 last night. She had this thing she had to do the hospital. So, you know, a rainy day and she wasn't going to get back until like 8:30, so it was like 6:00, so I went on Netflix and I watched this movie called "Detached" with Adrien Brody. Detached is about, see he plays a substitute teacher. I must say other than the fourth season of "The Wire" where the cop goes to kill the teacher. I think it's the fourth season, not the fifth. I think it's the fourth. I thought that's it. That's teaching in the city. That is it. What it feels like to be a teacher. What it feels like to be in this institution. What it feels like to be in front of a class where you have kids that that don't care. What is feels like to somehow transform that and have kids love you. [00:30:00]

What it feels like to have that loyalty from your students and to somehow when they realize like oh, you're not like other teachers, you actually care I can say it like it is. You're not fake and sort of like in a way that sets you apart in a way because all of a sudden faculty, they like you, but the administration they see you as kind of a pied piper. Like, where you have them following.

THERAPIST: Oh, I see. Okay.

CLIENT: At least that's how the school is.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know. It's her. I don't know. [00:31:10]

THERAPIST: Charismatic.

CLIENT: Being charismatic and calling it like it is and being somewhat (inaudible). Teaching science, but really talking about real stuff and listening to them. I don't know. So, but, at the same time, I mean the film is called detachment. Right? That feeling of also of feeling like you're not really there. Like, you're there, but you don't really know if you want to be a teacher but somehow you have these students and you can't help but being a real person. If you're a real person, what happens in front of the classroom, you're not going to stop being a real person but yet you don't know if that's exactly where you want to be. A phenomenal film.

THERAPIST: That's how Adrian Brody is in the film?

CLIENT: Yeah. [00:32:10]

THERAPIST: He's charismatic, but he's also not too attached.

CLIENT: Or, he doesn't admit to being attached.

THERAPIST: Okay. Okay.

CLIENT: He, by himself, like it's almost like he's being interviewed. Like it's sort of interspersed like he's somehow being interviewed by this mystery person. You don't know who's interviewing him. He's being interviewed during the course of and watching the teacher film part of it. It has a documentary kind of feel to it or whether if it's sort of him being interviewed after the fact. Like, there is something that happens and he's being interviewed because something happened. You don't know. It's the idea that there is chaos and there is baggage and there is disappointments and there is this notion of sort of this onslaught of messaging that happens and kids are victim to it. They're all trying to think truly for ourselves and yet kids are, teachers are an institution and somehow you have to resist this double think or terms. [00:34:00]

Yet, he's a sub, right? And deliberately. He deliberately is a substitute. He does not want to have. The kids, right, are feeling it too like he's going to go. He's not our teacher. He's not going to stay here. He's going to go. Me, I, the unwillingness to commit kids are devoted to him in the sense that they listen and they feel like he's being real and yet in his own life he has one foot out the door.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: Not wanting to commit. Not knowing. Anyway, so I watched that and I was just absolutely mesmerized and I thought this captures why you want to teach and it also really, really captures why you don't want to teach because you just have, you're surrounded by teachers who are burn outs. Kids who are damaged in their, and you can't fix all their problems. That was an important point in the film which is absolutely true. I mean that was absolutely my experience. [00:35:40]

You know, you have parent teacher conferences, right? All these teachers sitting in these empty classrooms and they say welcome parents and they have the room all decorated and no one shows up. That was, I mean, you know, at the school, you know, you have 25 kids per class. Six classes. 150 kids. So, you figure 150 sets of parents and you get from two to seven parents showing up. It's far fewer than that. [00:36:35]

Too, not taking it personally. Not even feeling sad about it. Just sort of feeling well, that's the case and realizing like oh, it's not my issue. You know. Having that detachment. I'm not feeling pain by this. I'm not crying over it. Other teachers are really like oh, my God. You know. I said well, of course. I mean no, duh. It's just fact. You know these kids. Do you expect to have parents lining up out the door? Of course not. That's what we're dealing with. That's the point. That's the point. They show up in your classroom hungry and tired and beaten perhaps or homeless. That's a fact. I mean you better get on board with it. You've got to know it. You better know that's who you're teaching and if you don't acknowledge that and get down on their terms when you're teaching. You know, inclusion biology or regular biology or learner's biology or AP biology, if you don't get that, what are you doing? [00:37:45]

You know, if you assume somehow that they're all planning to go to college. If you assume that parents care and want them to go to college. If you assume somehow that they're not afraid walking home because of gangs. If you assume somehow they're not in a gang.

THERAPIST: Then how are you really going to connect with them, right? I was thinking in some way too, you, I was imagining that maybe for you and Brody the way to be kind of be a real person is that you only do it for a limited amount of time. You can't become institutionalized or something like that. You can't stick around if you are going to be that way.

CLIENT: And, also, that's the thing too. Why would you want to stick around? I mean what sort of technology. [00:39:00]

There's a character played by James Kahn. He's an older, near retirement, jaded as all hell teacher slash guidance counselor. He drinks and looks at porn, but he just calls it like it is. Right? So, he cusses at students. It's kind of refreshing in a way because he's not a bad guy. He's just, I mean when he's with students, he's doing good. Right? He just doesn't give a shit. He just really doesn't for a lot of the film. It's like yeah, of course. I know. Late 50's, early 60's and there's a certain contempt, there's certain balance of humor. It's weird. In front of the classroom, they say the right thing and so forth, but outside of the classroom it's F'n this and F'n that. [00:40:20]

Just to go like flip a switch. Like you say the right thing in the front of the class and then when you're talking in person a minute after class, totally different. You know, it's like a sailor. Well, maybe not a sailor. Maybe someone on the training floor. Just angry and colorful language and bleak, perhaps. It's not Anthony Trollope. It's not a satire.

THERAPIST: Working.

CLIENT: Maybe that, yeah. So, I don't know. I mean that's the, that's whatever the dynamic is. It's that feeling of wanting to connect and wanting to help and identifying with that loneliness and struggle and feeling like kids are on the edge.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah.

CLIENT: Feeling that. Kids feel thrown away. Kids feel abandoned. I want to help that. Somehow I identify with that even though that was not my experience, right? [00:42:00]

I mean I was well cared for. I was well loved. I am well loved and teachers cared and I cared. So, I'm not sure how it is that I somehow have this sensitivity towards inner city kids.

THERAPIST: Because there is something. Maybe it was very narrow in width or something like that in terms of what was affected, but there was something very, very deep and painful happening around this issue of struggling with math and it's almost like what I was thinking about was that, you know, that book, those paragraphs that you read were trying to reach in to the psyche of connecting with the psyche of a you back then that needed to be understood. You know, yeah, was it all across the board? You weren't fed? This was something you experienced very privately and weren't kind of reached. There was just something about that, that you weren't reached about your own personal struggle and the shame you felt. The pain. All of that. That kind of went, you know, with unattended I think in some way. Not because of some, you know, broad trend neglected life, but just about something that was difficult for people to connect with or understand about you. [00:43:45]

I just think about some of the, how this was not just you telling me at times that you wouldn't go to class because it would just be too hard. It would be too painful and that wasn't because of procrastinating. It was because you were in a lot of pain somehow significant.

CLIENT: I was afraid. I mean there was a fear.

THERAPIST: A fear. Yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean it's that feeling of... You know, my dad bought me this truck. A brand new Toyota truck? I drive down from the mountain. Drop Jessica off across the street at the elementary school. And that feeling of just sitting there thinking do you want to go to school? Or am I going to go to the library or am I going to drive to the airport? Am I going to go to Spain? It was sort of a toss-up. [00:45:00]

So, I go through the phase of like okay, I'm just going to go to the library and I'm going to read. I will have my own education so I read. That phase of sitting in the library today and realize she gets off at 3 and going back to pick her up.

THERAPIST: You looked for people that were, for writing those, immersed in struggle.

CLIENT: But then it created a problem. Because now it's like okay, now I'm behind. No wonder. You miss a day of school and it's like no wonder math felt hard because I'm just missing it. Right? No wonder Spanish III is hard. No wonder I can't. Well, you know, that's the thing too. English class. You have to do all this crap and I'd think I don't want to do this. [00:46:00]

Yeah, I was playing catch up. I made things difficult. Had I showed up every day I'm sure school would not have been nearly as difficult.

THERAPIST: But it was like entering in to that struggle in the math classroom.

CLIENT: That was the difficult thing.

THERAPIST: Staying there. What the feels were it evoked.

CLIENT: Classroom to yourself works better. Usually, the class I was most not wanting to do. Spanish was always, and I don't know how this worked out. They must have rotated the schedule. Spanish was always the first period of the day. So, they must have changed the schedule every single year. I mean you start Spanish one, Spanish two, Spanish three. It was always the first day so they had to do that to get some practice time. So, it was always Spanish. It was always like fuck me. 8 in the morning and it's like you have to enter in to this world where you have no fucking clue what's going on. Right? [00:47:10]

THERAPIST: You were telling me that.

CLIENT: Because 8am is not kids who speak Spanish. It's easy enough for them, right?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I mean not many of them, but we had a few kids in class who spoke Spanish or at least were ahead of me in the sense even though they were Dutch they growing up on the dairy they learned to speak Spanish telling people what to do, right? And no interest in why am I learning Spanish? I mean you live in New Mexico. In Oregon why do you want to learn Spanish? I mean you rarely talk to the wet backs which is what, you know, not a soft term. You know you drive by on the way to school and there's just dozens of them hanging out at the convenience store waiting to be picked up. I did that right. Dad would have me do a task. He would have this big, massive bunch of property in this canyon and it's like old stuff. He'd give me, you know, he'd say here's a hundred dollars and I want you over the course of a couple days to deal with all this stuff. [00:48:20]

Well, I would give, I would just go pick up these guys and give them a few bucks and a sandwich and they would do all the work and I would pocket fifty, right? They would cut all the brush and pack it up and we'd put it in the back of the truck and go to the dump, right? That's just what you do in Oregon because they're available. I'm thinking so why don't, I mean, yes, I can speak Spanish but is that really how learning Spanish in private school? So I can, essentially, a sense of like do you want to? I mean you buy fake Rolex's. Why am I wearing spandex?

THERAPIST: It's a waste of time.

CLIENT: Yeah. It's not like we're reading Serrates. You know. I'm going off. You know, that fear. Thinking I am going to enter in to something and I struggle with it. She refuses to speak in English. There's that feeling of like fuck, I'm barely waking up and now I have to go in there and try to figure it out.

THERAPIST: Wow. Wow. [00:49:30]

CLIENT: Math was the least. I didn't have a problem. I had a fear of math. I liked the teacher, but it was Spanish class. Because it was truly foreign. It's like memorizing verb charts. I know Spanish is not hard for other things, but I had zero interest in learning Spanish. I didn't see the point. I didn't want to go to Spain. I mean and the people I wanted to deal with in Spain speak English. So, if you want to go buy something, they speak English. Anyway. You know, at the same time realizing, I've got to do well. You know, take another language, right? [00:50:30]

So, you know, in college, right, I'm taking Chinese. I'm taking German. I'm taking French. I'm taking Latin. I'm taking Hindi. Like, always putting myself in situations where it didn't feel good. It's not like I liked being in these classes. I'm like always baffled. I thought it's good for me. I've got to learn this. You know, it's the same with math, perhaps. Right?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: It's like it's good for me. You've got to know this.

THERAPIST: Right. Right. Yeah. Such a different like I think Katie being so different about that.

CLIENT: Could care less. All she wants to do is be in a rock band and make pizza. I'm sure she has felt lots of things. She knows she likes Led Zeppelin. She knows she can play the guitar. She sews her own clothes. That's her thing. She's this very attractive, stylish, dressed in black, little rocker and yeah, really, really smart. I am thinking I would have been intimidated as hell by her. [00:52:00]

She's really nice. I mean she's a nice person, but if you didn't know her, you might think holy shit. You know, Doc Martins up to her knees with red shoelaces and meanwhile it's 118 degrees out. I mean I delivered pizzas. I was in the window spinning the dough. It's like I get the pizza thing, but I hated it right. She likes it. It felt menial. It felt like God, why am I doing this? Alright. [00:53:00]

THERAPIST: What a very interesting paragraph. That first one, especially.

CLIENT: It's the sense of the successive. This one teacher makes this spin diagram. He said, you know, these tests have been around for 25 years. We know how we learned math, but this is not the mathematics kids know now. They know, they actually know a lot more math than we did, but there are some things they just don't know and we expect them to know because that's what we were taught. So, actually, we're, to teach calculus, they can do it. They can do it, but we have to teach to their skills. They know more about statistics. They know more about graphing. They know more about modelling than we ever did, but they don't learn other things that we somehow think that they should know and therefore they take the test and they can't do it and they felt they didn't learn the basics.

THERAPIST: Interesting.

CLIENT: So, we have to really figure out what they know. You know, so kids get penalized and so they think they know what they're doing and then they take the test.

THERAPIST: Discouraging. Yeah.

CLIENT: Well, alright, see you next week.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

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