Math evasion or invasion?

The funny thing is that I used to really like math whenn I was younger. The expressions and additions were something utterly fascinating to me. It was something simple.. something I could comprehend with just some basic knowledge. Math was also what saved me from entering into complete dispair when I moved to Puerto Rico. Isn't that something? It was because I had an advanced math knowledge for my age that I was able to get changed to the 'good' group in junior high and leave behind all the nitwits I had been stuck with. Punishment, I believe for not really knowing spanish.

Most 'gringos' usually slack off and proceed to fail. My brother was one of those. Well, maybe not fail completely but at least give up hope and therefore give up all will to live in such a disgusting place.

Thinking all this makes it seem all the more ironic that I have come to really hate math. Wait... allow me to clarify. I hate CALCULUS. (I can't say I hate math because Chemistry is a good part math being that its a large part algebraic expressions, and heaven knows I LOVE chemistry.)

I didn't think there could be anything worse than Calculus I when I took it last summer. How very wrong I was... While I felt completely brain dead and stupid while taking the tests, I managed to get things mostly right. As I later discovered, Calculus I which is all about limits and derivatives, is really a very philosophical class. After all, a limit is merely the place where the function INTENDED to go near at a certain value.

It wasn't something concrete, really... I mean... can you hold a limit? Can you move one around with your hands like I could do with all my chemical products? The answer is, of course, no. And while I took the class with a terrible professor, I managed to pass all my tests and got a C in the class. (C because I did so terribly in the final that my B got lowered.)

Now, taking Calculus II, I have found a math that I dislike even more than I disliked Calculus I. While, after enough time, I finally understood the concept of limits, derivatives and all that nonsense from last summer as something slightly useful (in the context of math, not in the context really of any class I have taken yet)... I just CANNOT seem to grasp the use of integrals.

This complex ecuation when first laid out in front of me at the end of last summer session (hence why I failed so miserably my final) was something I could not wrap my brain around. After taking my first test and dealing with integrals for several weeks now, I can say that I still DON'T GET IT! They say that it has something to do with calculating area by cutting the space up in a lot of little rectangles and then adding them all up.

Yeah......... right............ uh-huh.

My only hope is that I can manage to understand everything else set before me and pass this class! If I don't my next semester will be doomed and I'll be set back in my concentration classes. Therefore unable to graduate in four years. That would be terrible, considering that I had one time originally believed that I could graduate in only 3 years.

Oh, well... wish me luck.