Learning. Or, Not.

It's been said often enough there must be some truth to it: You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks. I may be proof of this, myself.

I'm taking a math class, this semester. Math for Dummies, I call it. Math 095 isn't even in the catalog. That's how elemental it is. This is basic Algebra. The kind most of us learned in high school. Hi, I'm the kid in the back of the class who drew pictures of airplanes and wondered what a boob felt like.

I know the feeling of frustration that comes when you struggle with learning. That's what motivates me to find different ways to illustrate an issue, and to keep asking during class if everyone is getting this or not. Some respond well to theory. Others need a more practical example. Some can hear it and know it forever, while others need to see it before they can believe it. I try to do whatever it takes to get that germ of an idea to take hold and there is no better thrill than seeing that "lightbulb moment" when someone's eyes light up and their facial expression changes and you know—they get it.

I don't get it. I have never been friendly with math. I can fly airplanes and I've done my taxes for thirty years. But I don't get a lot of math. When I started back to school to finish my degree, I knew I would need a few math classes and the Math department cheerfully provided a Math Placement Exam, to find out where my level was. I think I got my name right. Some of the equations they sketched out made no sense at all to me, but I remember some were kind of pretty, design-wise. Brackets and parenthesis and lines here and there. The kid who graded me told me I'd tested-out at Forrest Gump levels, meaning I could not even start with their 100-level classes, I would have to take Math 095 to get myself tuned-up for even Math 100.

This I did, in fulfillment of a promise I made to my father that I would finish my degree. And you know what? I did pretty well in that class, scoring enough points to not even need to take the final exam. I was ready to move on, except I had Things To Do that next semester and the one after that, and, well, it seems this class "expires" after a year. They may or may not have said something about that, I don't remember.

At any rate, I'm back. Going over the same ground I covered two years ago. Only this time I am struggling. I sit in the front row of class, just like last time. And I pay attention and I ask questions and I nod. But when I get home and crack open the books, they may as well be written in hieroglyphics. I am actually, provably, stupider this October than I was in October of 2008. Same teacher, same book, same chair. The only difference is me.

One of the things we learn in pilot training is to never give up. We listen to a recording of an air traffic controller as he deals with a young pilot who has screwed up, but somehow can't bring himself to do anything but scream into the microphone "MayDay! MayDay!" over and over as if that was going to save him. It didn't. We watch videotape that a thoughtful pilot provided of his own demise with a little video camera bracketed into the cockpit to record flights. You can actually feel the energy drain from a roomful of pilots as the guy on tape says "Hey, watch this!" and proceeds to ride it in.

Compare and contrast that with airline Captains Sully and Haynes. Sully put his gleaming jet down in the river next to one of the biggest cities in the world and lost not a single life. Haynes experienced an in-flight engine failure that took out his hydraulic system. "What's the procedure for loss of hydraulics?" he asked his flight engineer. "There isn't one" came the reply. But Al Haynes didn't give up. And though some didn't make it as his giant jet cartwheeled across the Sioux City airport, an awful lot of people lived through that crash. He kept trying things the whole time, and managed to keep the airplane away from the city and any buildings, steering it onto a closed runway.

My hat is off to those guys. I have never wanted to give up on anything so much as Math 095 in my life. This week.