Burning is Learning

What is to give light must endure burning.

            -Victor Frankl-

            It was the last day of math in which I was calculating no more numbers for life!  This is a lie I tell myself even today.  Algebra II was the course and because it was algebra II it was a cold, stormy, and dark night.  I walked in the dreary room which resembled a mental hospital thinking that I should be able to pass this class with the intense effort I had put into it through the tutoring sessions and marathon study sessions I had endured the entire semester.  The teacher handed out the test, I took a deep breath, reached into my bag, and I pulled out my pencil silently saying to myself:  “you can do it” in my most sarcastic Adam Sandler voice. I understood the importance of securing the happiness in math class.  I reached down for my calculator and my heart dropped into my stomach.  It was not in my bag where I had left it?  Panic set in because I know that my professor would have no mercy.   

I reported this news to the professor and he stated “Well that is too bad, Amber, it looks like you will be taking this test without a calculator.Maybe next time you will listen when the professor tells you to be prepared”.  There was no possible way I could have passed the test without a calculator. I made an attempt to answer the questions but failed.  I failed the course!  I was devastated!  My dream was to finish a doctorate degree and yet the my degree plan showed, on that day, that I would never even finish my AA.  I was 19 years old, living on my own with no financial support from my family, and I had to figure out how I was going pay for a doctoral degree when I could not pass or pay for math. Everything seemed hopeless as I drove home that night and it burned.  I found that my roommate gave my calculator to a friend to borrow for his test.  You see, he could not afford a calculator so my roommate felt that I was so much smarter and his friend needed it more.   

             It is now eleven years later and I am nearing the end of my doctorate course work.  Anyone can guess that I did find a way to pay for school, passed a few more classes, and failed my way to successful moments multiple times. As I write this blog, I am taking a course that involves math, quantitative statistics. Thanks to all my repeated failures in Algebra class and life I am doing okay, but it does not lessen the burn and fear that I may fail or am not adequate to sit at the table with my fellow students.  So where am I going with all this you ask? What does a candle burning and then giving light have to do with some blogster's math story?” 

The point is that in order to achieve anything we have to burn or fail in order to succeed. I know you’ve heard in many times but did you understand it fully?   It is inevitable, but not successive.  The tricky part is that I always thought at some point the burning or failing would stop and I would give light.  I realize now that this is false and socialized thinking because anything that is giving light is currently burning.  Success and failure always occur at the same time, if we choose success just as light and burning occur simultaneously. I’ve found that, when I do things that matter, life does not get easier. I have not found a way to make the burning more tolerable other than giving up.  When I give up, my cognitive development is unchanged; I make very little transformation or development in my mental or spiritual progression as a human being. So I guess what I am trying to say to those of you that are at the end of your ropes is:

 “if you ain’t burnin, you ain’t learnin.”

Amber Stubbs
2011