The first time I failed a test was in my Geometry class freshman year.

It was the second exam of the year, and when the teacher passed back our work, my page was covered in more doodles than any kind of equation, spreading out from the margins and intermingling with the few sorrowful numbers I had left on the page.

I’ve never been “good” at math. I still remember the day my fourth grade teacher introduced long division into our curriculum. That day marked the first of many extended bathroom breaks that coincidentally interfered with in-class worksheets.

Although I have not retained my knowledge of geometry proofs or solving matrices, there are a few more important things that I have learned from four years of high school math classes.

Suffering  is best done in groups.

Okay, so maybe that first failed exam was pretty bad. As I scanned across the room for others struggling with my same plight, I was paralyzed by the fear that I was the odd one out. But, as it turns out, that was not the case.

Math anxiety, a feeling of arithmetic-related fear or hopelessness, affects 40 percent of eighth grade students in the United States, according to Education Week, a nonprofit education news organization. This means that in a classroom with around 30 students, there are at least six other people struggling right there with you.

Instead of sheepishly hiding my bad quiz scores, I became  more vulnerable. By sharing my struggles with others, I realized that I was not alone. Over time, we began to share our successes too, building a community within the classroom based on that inital act of reaching out.

Cramming works. Sometimes.

I had been a procrastination warrior all throughout middle school, so when high school began, putting things off was the only study strategy I knew. This brought me a lot of late nights right before a major test or quiz, falling asleep on pages and waking up to incoherent notes.

Cramming can help students prepare for a test the next day, but in terms of long-term retention, it is almost completely useless, according to topuniversities.com, a college counseling website.

However if Algebra 2 taught me one thing, it is that if you are going to cram, you might as well do it right. Usually, I avoid looking over my notes endlessly trying to absorb the information. Instead, I focus on cramming as many old review problems as I can, taken from warm-ups, unit packets, and old Deltamaths. While I would not recommend cramming as the number one choice, it has certainly helped me over the years, and I am sure it will for years to come.

It actually is all about you.

Sitting in the back of my junior year Pre-Calculus class, the pressure was intense. While racing through worksheets with my tablemates, I found myself still struggling on the first problem as they compared answers on the second page.

Comparing grades between friends has an overall negative effect on a student’s academic self-concept, according to a 2022 study published in the National Library of Medicine. Nearly 81 percent of American teens compare themselves to their peers already, adding to the unhealthy grind culture within the classroom, according to a Common Sense Media, a non-profit for child research, study.

Initially, it hurt. I started telling myself that I was just bad at math, and I would never be able to measure up to them.

However, I learned over time that working at my own pace was the most effective way for me to learn, so I gave up on the constant shifting of eyes to my table partners’ work. No matter how egocentric it sounds, my math struggles are truly all about me.

Although it might not have felt that way, the past four years of struggle have taught me some of the most valuable lessons that I know today. Even though I am “bad” at math, I can now walk into college with a fresh mindset, new strategies, and hopes that one day I will know how to write geometry proofs.