You’re Just Adding To The Problem

(Within the first couple months of my grade three year, I come down with a bad case of chickenpox, with strep throat on top of it. While my teacher sends out booklets for me to work on during the week-and-a-half or so I am out of school, I am still a bit behind. On my first day back, I find out that my class had started on multiplication. I’m not understanding anything that’s on my worksheet, so I go to the teacher.)

Me: “Miss, how do I do this?”

Teacher: “Oh, it’s just like addition.”

Me: “Then why is it different?”

Teacher: “Oh, you’ll figure it out.” *walks away*

(I went back to my desk and started work in my paper. I treated every question like it was addition, and of course got all of them wrong. It wasn’t until a class almost a week later that I got it better explained to me, and I was given a times table sheet that I was supposed to have gotten along with the booklets and should have had partially memorized by then. By then, the damage had already been done, and I’ve struggled with math since then.)