The Class That Broke Me, but What It Was Actually Trying to Tell Me

This is the third post of an eight-post Intro Series. If you just came from Letters from a Dyscalculia Veteran of the Calculus Wars, welcome back. Those letters were the comedy. This content is what the comedy was covering.

The letters ended with a walkout from a freshman calculus arena and a promise that the war wasn't over. That promise held. The torturous calculus minions found me again. Twice.

Once at Rutgers, where an industrial accident led to my narcotics-hazed phone call from intensive care to an empathetic professor. Then again at Pacific Lutheran University. The same blank wall, the same retrieval failure, the same inexplicable vanishing of knowledge somewhere in my head, finally drove me into the Office of Student Services and toward my first real answer.

Here's the continuation of my story...

Let me tell you about the calculus class that tried to end me.

Not once. Multiple times. Over the course of roughly eighteen years, across two degrees, multiple universities in four states, that single class kept finding me. Quantitative Analysis. The one math requirement standing between me and a degree...twice. First, my undergraduate Econ degree at Rutgers. Then again, my MBA at Pacific Lutheran University.

That same freaking class. Same blank wall my brain hit every single time.

I still didn't know the name of that mental blank wall.

The Undergraduate Skirmishes and Industrial Accident

The first time calculus came back at me, I was at Rutgers, my third school in seven years, finishing up an Economics degree. I was struggling through it, grinding toward a C+ which was the minimum grade the department would accept toward my degree.

Not a comfortable C+, a desperate, survival C+. The kind of grade you earn by the I-have-no-choice, desperation, sheer-refusal-to-quit method rather than anything resembling actual subject mastery.

Mortally wounded on the calculus battlefield. I was failing that damn calculus class. Not even close to a passing grade. The semester was ending, Finals in two weeks, and once again this class would not qualify for my Econ degree requirements.

I didn't get to take the final exam.

I was a part-time UPS supervisor at the time. I was in an industrial accident. While trying to lift a jammed door on an inbound parcel truck, one of my boots slipped off the edge of the icy loading bay. I bounced off a metal grate, and suffered what's called a straddle injury.

Besides the unimaginable, soul-wrenching pain, it’s an injury that raises very serious questions about whether certain fundamental body parts related to the orgasmic joys of living are ever going to work properly again.

I was hospitalized for two weeks in intensive care.

I made the phone call to my professor during the first week.

I was extremely medicated: four different narcotics and tubes everywhere. I'm not entirely sure what I said in the first few minutes of that call.

Lost in the narcotic fog, I remember thinking it might be useful to share some specific graphic details of my straddle injury. I was trying to be careful in my description. My narcotics-slurred words were a desperate effort to transform my failing final grade into an incomplete and a class do-over.

I could sense my professor physically shudder as he went quiet on the other end of the phone. I still remember the effect of his voice:

“You just get yourself well. And please, don't you worry about this class.”

I didn’t leave it with that. I persisted and asked if I might get an Incomplete grade. I explained that I only needed a C+ to graduate. I wanted to ensure that I could finish the incomplete class next semester.

He paused and said, ”That's all you need, a C+ grade? Are you sure?"

Yes. I checked the department’s requirements before I enrolled in your class. I've always struggled with math, and this is the fourth time I’ve taken calculus...a C+ is what I need.

Another pause. Then, quietly, he said:

“You just take care of yourself. Focus on your healing. Get yourself well, and don’t you worry about your grade for this class.”

I’d done all I could. I handed the phone back to the nurse and resumed my glazed stare at the IV bag above me, its morphine drip...drip...drip sending me away from my misery.

I healed enough to be discharged from the Intensive Care Dept and into bed at home.

Still in bed a few days later, my flatmate brought me the mail. I opened my Rutgers report card. I was shocked to see I did not get an incomplete grade, the “I Grade” I was hoping for calculus.

My calculus class grade was a C+!

I couldn't believe it.

Seven years. Three undergraduate schools. My calculus wars were over. For good. Victory! Finally.

Round Two: the MBA

I should have known calculus wasn't done with me.

Back it came, this time as Quantitative Analysis in the MBA program at Pacific Lutheran University. I had been working on my graduate degree, on and off, for eleven years.

I was building a sales career and raising two kids. I was navigating a marriage and a corporate life, both of which never quite fit. The MBA was my economic escape route, my leverage point for better career opportunities. What was between me and that plan?

The same murderous, life-sucking calculus adversary as before ...of course it was.

I struggled. I dropped the class more than once. Sometimes I'd catch it and drop before the refund deadline. Sometimes I didn’t and paid the price. I just kept plugging away at my MBA.

Over the years, I stopped counting the attempts. As I got closer to the end, I finally came up with a plan to enroll in only Quantitative Analysis. No other classes that quarter. Just the one calculus course. All my focus. Zero excuses.

It was a three-hour, Thursday night class. The worst possible format for a brain like mine. But I didn't yet know that either.

Here's what would happen, every single week, like clockwork, I'd drive to campus. Find parking. Sit in that classroom and genuinely participate. Leading discussions. Working through the problems. Feeling like I had my brain wrapped around the concepts. I'd take careful notes.

Then I'd drive home, sit at the kitchen table around eleven o'clock at night, open my notebook to do the homework, and hit the same freaking wall.

The complete blank.

Not tired. Not distracted. A literal mental blank. I recognized my own notebook handwriting from just hours before. But now the info seemed like it had been written by a stranger. I knew I'd just been there. I knew I'd led class discussions. But the knowledge was just...not accessible. Gone. No pathway to retrieval. Baffling. Frustrating. A bit frightening actually...where had it gone?

I'd rewrite my notes and rebuild the classwork from scratch. Work through the problem from Ground Zero, step by step, reconstructing everything. Get on top of the coursework again and feel solid.

Then I’d get up to check on my infant daughter or toddler son who needed water, sit back down ...to a return of the mental blank wall, again.

Homework. Exams. Same frustration. Blank wall. Every time.

My one-class grad school strategy that quarter did accomplish something. First, I knew whatever was happening was bigger than my own ability to surmount it. Second, my panic and desperation lead me to seek help. (Finally. Duh.)

The Lady at Student Services

I made an appointment at PLU's graduate student services office. Explained what was happening. Across the desk, Ms. Halpew listened patiently. Then she asked me a question I wasn't ready for:

"Have you ever been tested for a learning disability?"

I remember my stunned reply. ”A learning disability? Me? But ...I’m kind of smart. Ms. Halpew, you’re joking, right?”

She smiled patiently. Then she explained that learning disabilities aren't about intelligence. She said it was worth getting evaluated. She offered a referral.

I was already in counseling at the time. Halpew suggested I discuss things with my counselor and then take it from there.

So I did.

The Diagnosis

What followed was an evaluation process with two different psychology offices. First, a surprisingly rigorous, two-session evaluation by a husband and wife clinical team who specialized in IQ assessment.

Next were visits to a second clinical practice for my evaluation by a different doctor. She administered a seriously boring battery of multi-visit tests much like the State Achievement Tests we’ve all had before.

Some were the math-based exams I expected. But I was surprised by the amount of reading comprehension. There was a ton of writing too. It was explained that my academic test results created the baseline which would be compared with my IQ results. Great, but I thought we were checking out my math thing?

The math gap was unmistakable. When your math evaluation scores are significantly low, but your IQ is in the gifted range, the discrepancy has a name: dyscalculia.^[1]

Finally I had a documented, researched and clinically recognized explanation, a math-specific learning disability, for why I had been suffering horribly on the calculus battlefield for more than eighteen years.

I wasn't goofing off. I wasn't stupid or lazy. I wasn't "bad at math" in the generic, character-flaw sense I'd been quietly believing about myself for my entire life.

My brain was wired differently in a very specific and measurable way.^[2]

Written Expression Disorder (WED) was a second diagnosis that really surprised me. A learning disability affecting my ability to translate thoughts into written language.^[3]

At first, I literally laughed aloud at the diagnosis. I’ve been attracted to writing since before the fifth grade when I wrote, The Elf Who Saved Christmas, performed that year as the all-school play.

I've always enjoyed writing. My brain never has a shortage of creative ideas for art, or for writing. But unlike my artistic muse, getting ideas out of my head and translating them into written words tends to be like birthing an elephant. And it turns out there's a clinical name for that particular elephant too.^[4]

(More on the irony of that one later which is even more ironic than the irony I’ll share in the next section below.)

I took the professional assessment documentation to Ms. Halpew. We agreed on a plan, and I got the academic accommodation for my MBA Quantitative Analysis class.

The PLU Academic Accommodation Irony

The academic accommodation proposed by Halpew: I did not have to take the Quantitative Analysis class.

I even received a full refund for the class although it was now well past the drop-by date. Woo-hoo!

Instead, I would have to take any other MBA curriculum class of the same credits. OK, great. No problem.

But she explained: “You still need the same amount of calculus credit in order to graduate with your MBA next semester.”

My stomach sank with her words ...it died and fell straight to hell.

“But I see you had Calculus as a Rutgers undergrad and you got a C+ grade...so, let’s just accept that and call your MBA calculus requirement fulfilled. Will that be ok?”

(I swear she had a twinkle in her eye.) I hugged her and bawled like a baby.

I graduated one quarter later from PLU. Got the MBA.

What the Calculus Class Was Actually Telling Me

Here's what I didn't know at the time, what I couldn't have known, or what I just wasn't ready to hear:

The blank wall wasn't just dyscalculia. The retrieval failures, the knowledge that vanished between class time and the homework table, the information on my own notebook page that felt foreign to me ...those weren't only symptoms of a math learning disability.

Something else was at work. Something the husband and wife testing team actually hinted at, vaguely and carefully, in language I didn't fully register at the time. The second diagnosing clinician was more direct when he shared the same information with me. A clinical psychology professional was literally forbidden from diagnosing an already diagnosed ADHD patient with one other, concurrent diagnosis.

But that's the next post.

What I will say is this: calculus was doing something for eighteen years other than ruining my GPA. It was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Every cognitive blank wall, every memory retrieval failure, every late night spent in frustrated despair at the kitchen table...all of it was pointing toward an explanation I wasn't going to accept for another thirty years.

The class didn't break me.

It tried to tell me something.

I just wasn't ready to listen.

Next in the series: The ADHD diagnosis that changed everything and the other diagnosis the DSM-IV rules forbade anyone to give me.

(I now know why, but that's also another post.)

Cheers,

— Steve

P.S. — Please practice grace and kindness ...to yourself also.