, Research Paper
In the Thurber’s story, University Days his instructors show varying degrees of patience, empathy, and understanding with their students. Three qualities which my high school math teacher Mrs. Giagomi didn’t have, she was quit the opposite, in fact she was down right sadistic.
Her reign of terror in my high school career began when I was a sophomore. I had her for geometry. I was kind of lost and never really understood what she was talking about, so I had ask here, “Mrs. G, what are you taking about?” She would give me her so-called “evil eye,” then start to scream saying, “well, if you worked on your homework for at least two hours made you would know.”
On my first report card my average for the class was a 72, my mom wasn’t too happy and decided that she would go find out what was going on at parent/teacher conference night. Mrs. G cleverly phrased what she said about me, telling my mom that I was slow to pick new material and asked a lot of questions, not giving her a chance to explain the material to the rest of the class. I was pretty angry when mom had told me what Mrs. G had said. But eventually the rest of the class started to become confused with G’s teaching style and realize what a b*tch she was.
With my awful luck I pulled Mrs. Giagomi again for my senior year math class Trigonometry. She wasn’t too pleased to see me or anyone else in the class again. This time around I figured that I would just shut my mouth, listen, and write everything down. Unfortunately that didn’t help much either, she would call on me for the answers to the homework, and once again she highlighted me as stupid. I just figured I had no aptitude for Math.
When I took my Math placement exam at Central the outcome was either taking Math 099 or a combo class consisting of Math 099 and 101. I decided I would take 099 in the summer at Tunixs Community College. The first class I found out that even if I passed it and got credit for math 099 this class was going to be harder than a Math 101 class. “Screw it!” I said, “What do I have to lose.” It ended up being the best class I had ever taken. My grade for the class was 4.0.
Bibliography
Thurber. University Days. Published 1953