Algebra II

Algebra II is pretty much the hardest class I have ever had the misfortune to take in my life. And I love my teacher as a person, but as a teacher I just don't understand anything she tries to teach me. What my friends and I have decided is that she doesn't speak kid, she speaks textbook. The teacher that I had in seventh and eighth grade was great at speaking kid, so I learned all year without feeling like I was learning at all. When we got to end of level tests, I was pretty proud of myself for only missing one question. He was just really laid back, so I actually kind of liked math. A lot of what helped was that most of the time was spent teaching, asking questions, and doing examples on the board, and then we had a small assignment that took about fifteen minutes. This year she just goes over what's in our study notes and then passes out a two-three page assignment that takes you a couple hours. And each assignment is only worth five points, but if you don't turn an assignment in then you stop getting curves on tests. Curves are really good, because when they're really high it's because everyone did bad, which happens a lot. I really wouldn't want to miss out on twenty extra points on a test I completely failed. So that's pretty much what motivates me to get my assignment in somehow. I'm not a very good test taker, especially not on timed tests (which hers all are). The hardest part about her class is that if you're sick for a day, you've just missed eighty minutes of stuff that takes forever to make up. This year math has just been really bad on my self esteem. When you can't seem to get a good score on any tests, you don't understand a word of what she's saying, and you're spending hours on assignments that you totally don't understand, it's kind of hard to feel good about yourself. So hopefully I won't fail this term and have to retake it again... Surprisingly I've actually managed to get all two A's and one A minus in her class so far this year. Mostly because if you are good during her class then she raises your grade up one level at the end of the term. (So like from an A minus to an A, or a B plus to an A minus) Hopefully I can do that again this term, but I have a feeling that I totally failed the test I took last week (I ran out of time). I got maybe two or three full pages done out of five, so I'm really just hoping that everyone else did bad so we have a higher curve. If nothing else, this class has made me challenge myself more and hopefully I'm getting better at math, even though it feels like I'm just getting worse. But I guess I'll just have to keep trying and doing the best I can and hope it works out.