What could possibly scare me? Math. Yes, math. Math and I don’t get along. Throughout my school years, it was my weakest subject because I just couldn’t¹ understand the more complicated equations and such. Why would it scare me now? I want to start college. Unless you count my training in the Air Force, I don’t have any actual college under my belt at the tender age of 24. I’m pretty sure I’d like to get my degree in meteorology or atmospheric sciences, but the prerequisites for those programs involve a lot of advanced-ish math. It’s very intimidating! Phrases and items like equivalent fractions mean nothing to me right now.

I received poor grades in my math classes in school. I could understand more visual things like bar graphs, but if you tried to get me to make sense of prime factorization, it was just about impossible. Sure, a lot of my grade was affected by the fact that I didn’t do my homework², but a big part of it that I was so intimidated and discouraged by numbers that I just shut myself off. I really should have sought out tutoring. I know I’ll definitely need to when I start taking math classes in college, because not only does my future career intentions ride on it, but the money and time I’m investing in something that’s essentially elective, but costly and necessary.

I’ve always thought of weather as a mix between science, math and art. How art? While certain events can be forecast with the help of how predictable the event is and a little with a probability calculator, there’s always the chance that it’ll go off and do whatever the hell it wants, without notice or warning. Tornadoes are such an event, and people in the Mid-West are more than familiar with that. Fog in San Francisco is an event you could set your watch to, but even the formation of a tornado can be hard as hell to forecast with enough warning time to give people in order for them to get to safety. I’m excited by how beautiful weather is and interested in how predictable and unpredictable it can be. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t dive in! My fear of math really needs to be tackled and conquered!