Last-minute madness
Having scoured YouTube in search of an answer to my questions and my lack of understanding, and having watched I don't know how many hours of videos urging me to have a “positive mindset”, to “work hard”, to “do exercises” (what kind of exercise do you want to do when you don't understand anything in the statement?), urging me to “not be ashamed”, “not be afraid”, “not devalue myself” etc. After tons of cheesy videos, like “nobody is crap at maths” (oh yeah, really?), I sincerely thought that this text would be exclusively incriminating. And then I came across Maths et ma team. I'm not claiming I've found the Holy Grail, but... seeing The Simpsons or Rick and Morty on its banner already appealed to me: such a man couldn't be bad 😉
Within 15 minutes, with the help of a rapper, his daughter and a pair of sneakers, the guy explains the equations in a crystal-clear way, anchoring them in real life, making you realize that, like Mr. Joudain and his prose, you have been solving equations all your life without even realizing it.
"Goodness gracious! I've been solving equations for over forty years without knowing anything about them, and I am most grateful to you for teaching me this."
But why was nobody before him, and especially no teacher, able to explain all this? It's still a riddle for me.
The same goes for the famous “natural numbers” and “rational integers”: he shows you the different sets, why they exist, how they are related, it's clear, organized, and makes sense.
So I'm not saying, I'm going to spend days watching this channel and suddenly start doing maths, but just to understand certain concepts, to at least have an organized view of what, until now, was just incomprehensible mumbo jumbo in these two areas, that's already a miracle! Thank you Salim, thank you very much!
As I said earlier, doing maths is boring and I'm not really interested in doing it anymore, but understanding the basic principles, filling in some gaps in my knowledge, looking at maths as this thing that is always distant though logical and organized in my eyes, is more than enough for me. It calms my mind, which is no longer forced to bump into this wall, this abyss, this black hole of total incomprehension. For me it was quite disturbing to know that I don't have any particular difficulty with learning, that I'm even rather good at it 90% of the time, and still to be plunged into this doldrums by the slightest hint of mathematics.
