A Coder’s Rocky Relationship with Math
Tags: webdev, beginners, programming, career
Published: 2022-11-04 18:15:43


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I didn’t consider myself to be “bad” at math until I failed advanced functions in grade 11 and was forced to go to summer school. Up until that point, I did alright in it.

When I made the decision to go back to school for web development, my past relationship with math crept up on me like a recurring nightmare. It was absolutely a source of anxiety for me for most of my way through the coding bootcamp I attended.

I remember the first time I saw a “for loop” (a type of loop used in programming to iterate over a sequence and allow code to run multiple times) I completely froze up — it was the first time I really doubted my decision to code. I freaked out. I stared at that loop for three days, trying to figure out how to make sense of it, but my lack of confidence made it impossible for me to get past my own wall. It wasn’t until one of my teachers sat down with me and showed me the beauty of console.logging everything that I was really able to understand the loop.

I’m not going to sit here and blame everyone else for not doing well in math in school. I definitely shut down at a certain point along the way and made a conscious decision to avoid it as much as possible. However, I do think that a lot of the reason I didn’t succeed at it in the first place was that a) I didn’t have good teachers b) I accepted the narrative that women are inherently bad at math (which is completely and absolutely **false**).

In high school, you could take two “routes” — academic or applied. If you wanted to go to university, it was generally assumed that you would stick to academic courses. In retrospect, I realize now that this was a load of garbage. You might not have been able to only take applied courses and get into university (I actually have no idea about that), but you could definitely take a few and still find schools that would accept you. I can’t help but wonder how different my relationship with math would be now if I hadn’t taken academic functions and flunked; if I had taken an applied course instead and done decently well.

It’s no secret that women are geared toward a less technical direction in school. I grew up thinking that men were better at math and women excelled at arts and social sciences. None of my teachers explicitly said this to me, but I was very observant of the fact that all of my math teachers growing up were men. High school guidance counsellors also pushed me in more of an artsy direction — I was actually specifically discouraged by my high school guidance counsellor to pursue science or math-related courses in university because I didn’t “have that type of brain.”

I was listening to a podcast the other day where the guest was a woman who made the transition from nannying into coding. Of course, it was an inspiring story to listen to — this woman who came from a completely non-technical background, realized she wasn’t happy doing what she was doing and made the switch into programming. If you’ve read my previous [article](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-writers-journey-into-programming-eb16198773a1), you’ll understand why I empathized with this woman’s journey so much. Her name is Sudie Roweton and she’s now a software engineer at Hill Air Force Base.

There was a point in the episode where both Roweton and the interviewer, also a woman in tech, stopped and pondered the fact that they were never pushed in a more technical direction in their academic upbringing in the first place. As Roweton explained that she credits her stepbrother for putting the idea of coding into her head, she also wondered why she had never considered such a profession in the first place.

*“We were just hanging around, Pat and I, we were just doing nothing and chatting, and I remember lamenting about my directionless path that I was on, like I had no idea what I was doing but I [knew] I wanted to do something cool. And he just out of the blue suggested ‘hey, have you ever considered coding?” And it took me aback because I had never even considered that and I’m not sure why. It had never even come up, not once.*

*And that’s kind of a sidebar too, which is quite interesting. I’m not sure why that wasn’t brought up in high school when I had this aptitude for mathematics and logic, you know?”*

In university, I had what I thought would be my final nightmarish encounter with the logic-based subject. I was one week into a business math course when I decided I was on a fast path to failure. I dropped the course and changed my minor from business admin to marketing so I could avoid future math courses.

At the end of the day, it came down to a complete and utter lack of confidence.

When my coding teacher sat down with me and console-logged my way through a nested for loop, I’ll never forget that moment. She saw that I was struggling (could have been the mascara leaking all over my face) and she levelled with me as a woman in coding. She pointed out that I might be a visual learner, and maybe if I could see exactly what was happening with the ‘i’ variable in my loop, that maybe something would click. And she was absolutely right. After graduating, I moved on to become a teaching assistant for the following cohort and used that exact same method to help other web development students who were dealing with similar anxieties.

When I think about that moment, I can’t help but wonder what a difference it would have made for me if I had a teacher like that in high school. If someone had figured out that I might learn a little differently, and maybe took a few minutes to find a way to explain a concept that would click.

Now I genuinely enjoy math and problem solving, and that is a direct result of learning what my brain is truly capable of over the last year. I’m no mathematician, I still need help calculating the tip at a restaurant, but I no longer freeze up when I’m approached with a problem I don’t know because I have the confidence to approach it. I’m even taking a few online courses to better my skills and make up for everything I didn’t learn in high school and university.

I don’t regret my choice to major in English. Those four years were well spent surrounded by books and staying up till 4 am writing essays that to this day I’m still proud of. It was all wonderful.

But I do wish I had minored in some sort of science. What stopped me was my disbelief that I could handle it, and now that I know I could, I wish I could go back and tell my 19-year-old self that.

If you’re considering coding but not sure if your brain can handle it, know this: there is nothing you can’t do in this world if you’re willing to put in the work. Everyone learns differently and yeah, certain things come easier to some people than to others, but anything can be accomplished with practice and confidence.

Plus, your past experiences make you unique, especially as a programmer. Every discipline, whether it be arts, communications, trades, etc, offers a unique skillset. Find what makes you stand out, discover what you can offer from your own experiences, and own it.

*Feel free to add me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-subject/), or follow my journey on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/changingthesubject/)!*

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