More Math Woes

There is a very nice woman in my algebra class who is driving me crazy. She doesn't ever know what she's doing and requests my help a lot, which is fine except that it takes FOREVER to help her, partially because her communication skills are not the best.

I'm doing well in that class, but it's not like know the material backwards, forwards, and in my sleep. I have to work out each problem step by step and write everything out, so if you pull me away from a problem it takes a minute for my brain to switch back to verbal mode so that I can understand your question and figure out where you're having trouble, then switch back to math mode so we can work it out. It takes even longer if your question is, "And the 18," because THAT IS NOT A QUESTION! I don't know if you're telling me I forgot to do something with the 18 (and if so, what?), or if you're asking me what to do with the 18 now that we have it, or if you're asking how I got the 18 in the first place, or if you're asking me a completely different question about problem # 18 while I'm in the middle of problem # 20, which just happens to have an 18 in the equation. Even the way she asks a question is making me do all the work, because first I have to figure out what the hell her question is.

It's like when I used to work in customer service and people would call in and say, "I'm upset about this shipping," and then stop talking, expectantly. Oh. Ok. I'm sorry. What exactly is the problem? Is your package late? If so, is it actually late or did you think 5 - 7 business days meant you could order it on Friday and have it by Tuesday at the latest? Is the shipping fee too high? Do you think you shouldn't have to pay a shipping fee at all because you're not used to online shopping and the mall doesn't charge shipping fees? Give me a clue; what are you asking me to do for you? What do you want? And also, who are you? I had to coax out every detail for 10 minutes before I could even start to work on fixing the problem. Dealing with this woman is kind of like that. 

Math has a lot of steps and can very easily get confusing, so you'd think the best thing to do when she asks me something would be to just start at the beginning of the problem and go through each step together. However, when I try to do that she doesn't write it down or work the problem along with me, she just nods and says, "Uh huh, yeah, ok," in a manner that makes it very clear that she isn't understanding but not at all clear what she's having a problem with, and 3 steps in she's completely lost so we have to start all over. At that point she just wants to look at my paper to see how it's done, but the work doesn't make sense unless you know what you're looking at because in algebra you work all over your work. You have to scratch things out and write over your problem, then re-write it down below and write all over it again. This is all done in the same pencil so it's hard to see what's part of the original problem and what's working it out. Any given line is really 2 or 3 steps being shown all at once, so it doesn't make sense to look at.

It's not cheating to look at my paper, not really, since we all work in groups together and are meant to help each other out, but it's still annoying. Copying it down doesn't teach you anything; you're not learning the process, so I know tomorrow you're just going to ask me the same thing all over again. Furthermore, it's annoying when everyone else in the group tried, did the problems on their own and only checks their answers against the rest of the group's, or they at least did most of the work and just need help on a few issues. She needs help on every issue, which again, is fine because not everyone is good at math, but sometimes she'll just sit there and let us do all the work, then copy the answers and the work and ask us to explain it to her. Not us, me. And it takes a very long time because she doesn't follow along even though she asked the question.

Ugh. I need to have more patience with her. I know what it feels like to be lost.