Show intro: Hi, I’m Vanessa Vakharia aka The Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy - a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas, one problem at a time. When I was in grade 11, I failed math not once, but twice because I was told that I just wasn't a math person. Thanks to a math intervention in the form of an amazing teacher, I ended up scoring 99% in grade 12 math, and now I run The Math Guru, my very own math tutoring studio in Toronto. I started Math Therapy to take this conversation global and I like to think of it as not just a podcast but a movement. Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist, but the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry - no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.

Episode Intro: Hi guys! How's everyone doing this week? Okay cool, I totally realize you can't answer so let's just move on. All the way from New Brunswick, Canada on Math Therapy today I’m excited to introduce you guys to Jill. Awe inspiring mom of three who decided to make the switch from, get this, nutrition to power engineering at the age of 40, despite the fact that she spent all of her younger years totally hating math. Crazy, right? From crying in the bathroom, to melting down in front of her husband, to doing everything in her power to keep her eye on the prize, this episode has it all - so buckle up kids, here we go.

Vanessa Vakharia: Okay so welcome to the podcast!

Jill Waddell: Thank you!

V: Alright, let’s get into it. So, we heard your story because you actually wrote to us to tell us how math therapy has helped you overcome your fear of math. Oh my god, it's kind of our first fan mail ever which is so exciting. (Laughing) I want to know what event prompted you to even write to us.

J: The end of last September, I think you had just launched your podcast and that coincidentally was when I started school. It's Community College essentially, but you have to be there every day, so I went from a very active job to sitting behind a desk and I was feeling antsy. As we will talk about it, my struggle with math has been so intense and the learning curve that I have been on has been so steep. I was feeling so discouraged about what I didn't realize I didn't know, like what I didn't know I didn't know, if you know what I mean.

V: Yeah, for sure.

J: I was just out for a walk and I was just looking for some sort of, I don't know... If I could just learn math through listening to a podcast or get better at math through a podcast and I was just searching for math something. The Math Therapy podcast popped up as an option, it had this colourful logo and the name of it - Math Therapy, it spoke to me because it felt like that's what I need is math therapy. I had been reading about math anxiety as well and thinking that's what it feels like I have, is math anxiety, and then I just proceeded to listen to the podcast. I don't even remember who you were speaking with but I just remember feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, that is me, you're talking about me, this is my struggle with math. I can't believe that there's other people in the world that feel that way about math.’. When I eventually got to the end of the semester, I was like, the first person I am going to tell that I passed this course is Vanessa. I'm going to email her.

V: Oh my god, shut up! That’s so cute! First of all, literally this is so exciting because I feel like this is how famous people feel before they get famous. The first person recognizes them on the street and they're like, “Oh my god, someone recognized me.”. Literally, you are making me feel that way so thank you so much. 

But second, I actually am really curious, did you honestly think that no one felt the way you felt before? Before hearing the podcast did you feel isolated in those feelings? Did you think there was something weird about what you’re experiencing?

J: I mean not entirely. I had met other people in my adult life who had struggled with math but I had never really talked about it with them to the extent that you were talking about it on the podcast. I had on a surface level been like, ‘Oh yeah. I'm not really good at math.’, or ‘Hahaha, I can't count back change to save my life’, you know just different things that other people would go, “Yeah math isn't really my thing.”. But the podcast that you had put out just explained math anxieties and a complex with math and a difficulty with math and a relationship, a negative relationship with math that I had never really heard somebody talk about to the extent that you were talking about it.

V: This is so interesting because you were a holistic nutritionist, right?

J: Yep.

V: ...and you have decided to completely switch careers into engineering?

J: Mhm.

V: Okay so talk us through the whole thing. What got you from, I'm a holistic nutritionist, to being like I need to change my career and become an engineer? How did that even happen?

J: Essentially, it was kind of an accumulation of events. I had been on a mat leave - so I have three kids they’re 16, 14, and 3 years old. I ended up being on mat leave feeling like I needed to assess my situation. I had been in holistic nutrition for, at that point, around 4 years, but I had been in the health and fitness industry for 15 years before that. I had been a fitness instructor, I had always been involved on that scene and I had raised my family too; I was a stay-at-home parent for quite a few years. Being a fitness instructor and all that was kind of part of my gig as a stay-at-home mother, and then I got into the nutrition world once my older kids were in school.

I started to do my research and I started to look into… You know at 40 years old, what am I going to do that I don't have to go to school for 4 years? Power engineering just kept popping up. 

V: What even is power engineering?

J: Power engineering is the operation and maintenance of boiler systems and mechanical systems in various facilities.

V: So random.

J: It is so random, it is. Basically, if you were to drive around and look at any kind of a building that has a stack, that building likely has a power engineer involved.

V: Okay so this must be something that’s local to where you are from.

J: It is, it’s a program that’s offered at NBCC which is the college I attend. It's one of the more highly sought-after programs, there was actually a two and a half year waitlist when I applied because the employment rate is quite high. Kind of in continuing why I did this, it was a program that was a short amount of time with the greatest financial gain at the end.

V: Okay so your motivation, you're kind of like holistic nutrition is happening here, there's nowhere for me to go, I need to make some sick cash - what can I do in the shortest amount of time? Is that a good summary?

J: That is a good summary, yeah (Laughing).

V: Okay, awesome. So this is what you are thinking. I want to talk to you about your relationship with math up to this point, because I’m thinking as someone who has never loved math, seeing the word engineering next to the word power would straight-up intimidate me. I’d be like what the fuck is going on right now? 

J: Oh yeah, it straight-up intimidated me too because I remember actually looking at the program descriptions on the college website and feeling almost numb, like sick to my stomach to think this is what I'm going to go study - like what am I doing? It's pretty safe to say Vanessa, there was an awful lot of soul-searching that went on when I was in the process of putting the nutrition world aside and looking into engineering. When I had looked at these course descriptions, they were terrifying, they sounded terrible to me. Basically, I was doing the soul-searching aspect of it, that was where I started to feel like I need to decide if I'm going to do this or not. Once I sent my acceptance letter back in and the wheels started turning, then I started to hear from other people that I knew that were power engineers telling me how much they enjoy their job and explain to me what it is they did. It started to make me feel a lot better about the decision I had made and from that point I started to learn more about it, learn about the kinds of duties that they did every day. I was like, I think I can do this and I think I'm really going to enjoy it.

V: Okay, let’s just back up for a second. When you were in high school, when you were younger even, you were never confident in math, right?

J: Yeah, no.

V: What was the whole vibe growing up to get to this point?

J: I had a job at around 16 years old and I was working at Tim Hortons double drive-thru…

V: I also worked at a Tim Hortons when I was 16 too. Twins, that’s awesome. No drive-thru though because we’re in Toronto.

J: Okay, so this is a double drive-thru, there's always cars coming in on both sides and you had this headset on and you had to keep track of calls coming in and we had to put them in the computer and get orders right. I was always put on cash. They had me in front of the cash register and the way it worked was they wanted cars to go through so quickly that you’d put the order in, and when the car came to the window, you just knew how much money it was. But they wouldn't let us push a change button in order to know what the change was.

V: Oh my god, what do you mean? People would give you 5 bucks for $3.88 and you’d just have to know what it was and hand it back to them instantly?

J: You’d have to basically count backwards from $3.88 to $5. At 16 years old, having a pretty limited crappy math background, that was really a huge struggle for me. I would basically in that moment, take cash and just sort of hand people what I thought might be the amount of money that they should get back in change.

V:(Laughing) How did that work for you?

J: sometimes people would come back in and say, “You gave me too much”, or “You didn't give me enough”. I can guarantee you there were many people that got the wrong change and never knew.

V: Did you ever calculate it? Did you ever even try or were you just like, whatever here’s some random coins, take it?

J: If it was easy, if it was like a dollar fifty and they gave me a toonie, I knew I needed to give them back 50 cents, that was always fine. But if it was something like $3.88 and $5, it would have taken me a while to figure it out and I...

V: So what would you give the person back? Like quick, go, what are you handing me back?

J: I might have given them back... Well I would have to count from $3.88 to 90 to give them their 2 cents back when we had pennies, and then I would have known it was $3.90 so I would give them 10 cents and that was $4, and then I knew I had to give them a dollar to make it 5. I would be giving them back $1.12.

V: But that’s correct.

J: But I couldn’t do it quickly, I couldn’t do it quick enough for how fast these cars were coming through.

V: So you would do whatever came quickest?

J: Whatever came quickest because I was so flustered. Eventually, I lost that job, they fired me.

V: (Laughing) I was about to be like, how long did this last!?

J: It didn't last long.

V: You were just throwing pennies at people as they drive by! (Both laughing) Oh my god that’s actually fucking amazing. 

J: I remember writing an exam in grade 12 and getting this 51%. I had been asked to come back into the classroom about a week later after we wrote the exam, and the math teacher sat me down and she was a sweet little lady. I remember her just saying, “In order for me to pass you on this,”, because I think I had something like a 48% on the exam, “we're just going to walk through this question here together.”. She proceeded to walk me through some sort of an algebraic equation and essentially gave me the answer in order for me to pass that exam. That mark, that 51%, it was almost like this number that I felt was always stuck on my forehead all the time. This is the mark you got in math and so this is your capacity for math.

V: Can I ask a question? What was happening? Were you struggling? Were you trying and not getting it? Why were you getting these marks? Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but why did you end up almost failing that calculus exam?

J: I really didn't care about math. I didn't have parents that were pushing me and telling me I need to get a better math mark or anything like that. They recognized that math wasn't a strong suit for me. My dad was never a student himself, he’s fantastic in all other things, jack-of-all-trades, super capable, wonderful but never a student. My mom had always worked hard at school but she was the one that studied her butt off and worked super hard to just get an 80. They didn't have big expectations of me to have high marks so it wasn't something that was high priority in our household. I was also so good at everything else; I had amazing grades in englishes and art and history, and really great marks in biology. So for me, I just needed to pass math to get by - I didn't care enough about it.

V: Moving forward to now, and you're like okay, power engineering, this is the way to go, this is what I need to do with my life, this is how I make bank. I'm so curious how you got the confidence honestly to be like, okay you know what fuck, I can do this. Where did that even come from?

J: I wouldn't say that I walked into it with confidence in any shape or form. 

V: (Laughing) You must’ve had some degree of confidence. Honestly, truthfully, most adults I know who are like, ‘I need a career change’, and I feel like in your 30s you know a lot of adults who are like, shit, I need to make a move in my life. We all know many people that don't have the courage to make any sort of change let alone a really bold change because there is that fear of failure and there’s that fear of leaving security. I feel like you're talking about making a huge leap here. What gave you that courage?

J: Well, I don't know if it was just a bit of being extremely naive, a bit of stupidity on my part. It was really a huge risk, like a massive risk to do it. By this time though, I'm an adult, I'm a grown person that had to give up my job and go all in, feet first to this decision. It wasn't just like I was going to start school and say, ‘Oh well, I don't think I can do this so I'm not going to. I’m just going to keep living in my parents basement and carry on with my life.’. That wasn't it, this decision was like, you're doing this Jill whether you like it or not. This was a huge sacrifice for me to do this, you know we're living on one income and it’s a big deal so for me to do it whether I like math or not was sort of like tough shit.

V: Wow, yeah. The stakes were almost so high when you made that decision that you were going to figure it out. It's kind of funny, that's a really interesting way to put it - even though it was by your own choosing. Often I wonder when I think about our students now, I really wonder if the stakes are just simply not high enough for so many of them. This might seem tangential, obviously I’m going to rant about this, I do this every interview because I can’t stop myself but I feel like Tik Tok and social media are to blame because in a way they reduce the stakes because students keep thinking they have this fucking weird fallback plan where they can get away with doing nothing and still somehow make it.

I feel like with math, you truly have to work hard and you have to practice and there has to be consistency there, whereas with all of these things that are advertised to young kids these days as measures to success, you can just do something once and go viral. It's almost like the stakes are constantly not high enough for them to say, ‘Well fuck, I'm going for it.’.

J: Absolutely. I have two teenagers so I know all about the attitude of what kind of regard and respect that they have for these viral streamers and YouTubers. 

V: Oh my god tell me. Like what?

J: They talk about these individuals, these are grown adults that sit in front of a computer screen and stream their lives and allow teenagers to watch what they're doing all day long. They really take them seriously, they really talk about these people. I recognize that maybe these people do make money doing what they're doing and it is a lifestyle for them, but it's just such a lifestyle for a minute amount of people. That's not really where I want them to put their eggs for the basket.

V: Honestly, if they would focus on math they could calculate the statistical probability of actually getting to that point where they can actually make money off of it.

J: Yes which is very very very, so very low.

V: How did your kids feel when you decided to make this move? It’s such interesting role modelling for them. Were they supportive? Were they like, ‘Oh my god mom you’re fucking crazy’? What was the vibe of your friends and family around this?

J: Actually it's interesting, I had quite a few family members very concerned. My mom and dad being one of them. They were really concerned because they saw it as a huge risk like, ‘What are you doing Jill? You've always been involved in health and fitness and nutrition.’. I’d done a lot of stints too with interior design and more of the creative, artsy side of things and so this, I know I recognize, it was a full 180 for them to see me do. They had a bit of fear in it, seeing me go for it. The kids, they're still young teenagers so for them they were like, ‘Okay mom, that’s cool. If that's what you want to do, go for it.’. 

They didn't really have a big say in it but what is kind of interesting is when I am sitting down and working on my thermodynamics homework or math homework, my son Sam especially, he likes to sit down and just see what I'm working on and it makes me feel amazing. When I can sit and explain to him what I'm doing and he’s like, “Oh that's cool. We’re kind of starting some of those concepts in our class right now.”.

V: That’s so awesome. 

J: Yeah! It makes it so I can kind of relate and help them too with what they're working on, which is something I wasn't really ever confident in doing before.

V: I feel like we need to take a moment to brag about what you told us, which was your exam results. I don’t want to say it for you, can you just tell us all.

J: I will tell you. It kind of started out my first math test, our math fundamentals, it was MATH 1089, that math fundamentals we had to do it first semester in order to have a prerequisite for Applied Mechanics for second semester. The first test I took in math fundamentals, I got a 55 and I was crushed. I did the math boot camp and I have shed more tears over math in the last 6 months, it's not even funny because there's been so many moments where I'm like, okay I'm tapping out, I can't do this…

V: Really!? You’ve been about to give up?

J: Oh my gosh, every single Sunday night for the first semester I cried to my husband and blubbered about how I wasn't cut out for this, who did I think I was doing this program? It’s so hard…

V: What did he say? What was his reaction?

J: My husband is sweet and he'll say, “Okay, why don't you tell me, can you explain to me how it's not working for you? Tell me what it is that you're struggling with.”. He would do this thing where he would get me to explain it to him as this little back way of getting me to explain it so I would understand it even better.

V: Oh my god you know what that’s called right?

J: No.

V: Math therapy. (Laughing)

J: Math therapy! 

V: He sounds amazing! What would happen? Give me a scenario, what would you say?

J: I remember for electrical class, we had to do Kirchoff's Law. You have to take a circuit and take the different resistances on the circuit and essentially line them up in a substitution or elimination method and calculate it down to get a missing resistance for that circuit, and then you have to replace that resistance and put it in another one to get the other missing resistance… It's just complicated. I remember just being gobsmacked by this Kirchoff's Law, trying to figure it out, never seen in my life, never done electrical in my life and my husband was like, “Okay I can tell you're frustrated. Why don't you tell me what it is that you're supposed to do?”. He had me explain to him, and walk him through it and by the end of it I was like, ‘Oh my god I understand how to do this now!’.

V: I love him for you!

J: Yes, he's sweet. He's been extremely supportive through all of this. Having him have me say it out loud why I'm doing the program, why I signed up for all this in the first place, it solidified all the reasons why I'm doing this program and why it's important that I just keep one foot in front of the other and just keep plugging along for it.

V: First of all, we still have not gotten to the point of my question. You still need to brag about your exam, but I do want to pause because I love this whole idea of mindset and keeping your eye on the prize. There's something so important about being like, I have this goal and I have it for a purpose and writing those things down and when things get tough and when you feel derailed, of continuing to remind yourself why it's so important. I actually think that is part of what gets in people's way. It’s kind of like what we said before about the stakes not being high enough, right? When you start forgetting the reason, your purpose, your drive, sometimes that really does lower the stakes to the point where things don't seem that important anymore. I think that's really cool, I love all his techniques. Okay, your exam, let’s go. What happened?

J: So I got a 55% on the first one, terrible. Then by the end of the semester, I got an 83% on my final math exam.

V: Wait do we have one of those cheer tracks? You know those tracks in TV shows where they’re like, wooh with the applause? (Crowd applause audio plays). Congrats!

J: Thank you!

V: How did that happen and more importantly, what did that show you? 

J: Honestly, it just showed me my capacity. It showed me what I am capable of learning, even though I wasn't learning it at the same rate as a lot of the other people that I go to school with. I mean there's a lot of people that come from all walks of life but 90% of my class are kids that are fresh out of high school or they waited a couple of years taking a civil engineering course while they were on the waitlist for the power eng course. These people have tons of experience and a lot of confidence and it's almost second nature to the math that we were doing. It was all new to me so for me to go from walking into the boot camp at the beginning of the school year, excusing myself to go to the washroom so that I could cry because I was so intimidated and so lost on what they were doing, then to writing that math exam and doing things that I just couldn't seem to figure out like logs, I couldn't get logs. By the time that math exam came around, I could do logs like an actual boss - I'm so good at them.

V: Yas bitch! That’s amazing! I fucking love that.

J: Even solving a right triangle, it took me so long to get the whole SOH CAH TOA thing down. But I can do it in my sleep now, solving a right triangle is no issue .

V: Look at you go, you’re such a queen. Wait, the kids in your class, are you their hero? Do they think you’re super cool? I bet you some of the girls in that class really look up to you. 

J: If they are they haven’t told me. (Laughing) Maybe they do but I don’t know about it at all.

V: Are you friends with any of them? Do you see them crying? They’re probably crying in the bathroom too. Not just the girls, everyone.

J: No, a lot of them have a lot of experience in math. None of them were as crazy as I was to sign up for this program with the negligent math experience that I had. I would say aside from that one lady that unfortunately did drop out three weeks after the program began because…

V: What happened? Tell me, tell us the dirt, spill the tea.

J: She was really overwhelmed by it. It kind of came down to that she didn't have the same drive to do the program as I did. 

V: There’s that mindset again.

J: Yeah, I was just down and out determined that I am doing this program through hell or high water. I am doing it and I'm finishing it. I might not finish it with a 4.3 GPA but I am finishing it.  For her it was a little bit different, she had a lot of fears about everything, everything was difficult for her, the math namely of course. She kind of just decided to tap out before she got too deep into it.

V: Are you still friends with her?

J: Yes I still stay in contact with her, she's a doll. She and I really hit it off because we were both kind of the old dolls in the class. I am the oldest person in my class for sure. I think the next oldest is like 35 and then everyone else are like babies to me. They're like 20 years old.

V: I feel like it must be so cool for the young kids in your program to see you just give no fucks and be like I am doing this at this age. Do they know your story?

J: I don't think that they do.

V: When this podcast comes out they will. We’re going to go viral don’t worry. I’m going to contact your college, don’t worry I’ve got this. I’ll make sure everyone in your class hears it. You can be a case study.

J: (Laughing) Yeah, I have instructors that definitely know my story. The college I attend, they have amazing instructors, they're very much committed to your success. They know how much of a struggle this has been and have even told me if ever you need a recommendation for a job, I will give you a glowing reference because I know how far you've come and I know what you came from. 

V: And how hard you are willing to work! 

J: Yeah and it does sometimes take a mature person to be able to take the hits that maybe I've taken. I am witnessing a lot of students that are 30 years and younger, a lot of young to mid-twenties especially, they’ll get a test mark back and it'll be only a 91 and they'll be on the floor with it. 

V: Ugh, welcome to my life. I bring this up a lot but I actually think it’s important for adults to remember, especially adults that are dealing with kids. I talk a lot about how we do have a lot of adults that come see us later in life to do math. I don't know if you remember but on season one we had Yvonne who's in her sixties and has decided to do math, to complete math. We’ve had a couple of adults, and it's funny because when you go back and revisit this stuff as an adult, it's not necessarily easier, you don’t all of a sudden understand what a parabola is, but you've been through so much stuff in your life that that hit of something being difficult or failing a test is not the end of the world anymore. It really is about resilience so how do we teach that to younger people? How do we do that so that when they get a 91, they can take that in stride and not think it's the end of the world? There are some things that only time and experience can take us to but I really do feel that kids these days are so fragile and so unprepared for anything that is not exactly their version of success, that it throws them off and discourages them from pursuing their dreams so easily. 

Before I get to my final two questions I do have one more question, it's kind of about how you said you were brought up and we hear a lot of stories of people who grew up in households where they were told they weren't math people or they had a parent who was very open about the fact that some people can do math and some people can't. Your story is a bit different, you talked about the fact that your parents really never mentioned anything to you about math specifically but there were no specific expectations around math either. How did that upbringing... Did it at all affect the way that you parent your kids when it comes to education?

J: That’s an interesting question. Mainly I find with my own kids, I've never really wanted them to know what I struggled with and I always thought that that was going to be the right thing that I should just not tell them that I struggle with math. I didn't want it to get in their heads, ‘Oh well mom struggles with math which is why I struggle with math’. My parents didn't really ever speak over me in a way like, ‘We were never good students so you're never going to be a good student’. It was just that they celebrated what I was really good at and I remember being really praised for being such a good artist and being such a good english student and how creative I was.

That was sort of something that has rolled over into my parenting. My oldest child, she is not strong in math and has been seeing a math tutor here in our community for the last couple of years which has helped her immensely. I even sought out help from the same math tutor. I try to focus on what they're really good at instead of focusing on what they're not good at because it's what I know and it was what was modelled for me.

V: Have you ever told them about how you struggled with math?

J: Eventually I did, like literally within the last year of me going down this road of entering an engineering field, they could see that my struggle with math has been so intense. My middle son is so naturally good with math - he's never had an issue or a struggle with it and that's always been a bit of a bone of contention between the two kids, the two older kids, because my oldest has always struggled with it. She's like, “Sam never has troubles with math and that sucks that I have to have such an issue with it.”, so I’m trying to not allow that to be her way of thinking, her mindset of feeling jealous that her brother is good at something that she's not because she's great at things that he's not.

V: How do you counteract that with the fact that you struggled with math and you literally just got an 83 on an engineering exam? Does that not show your kids that perhaps there is no such thing as natural aptitude or that if there is, it can be mitigated with hard work? Do they talk about that at all?

J: I brag, I brag. I tell them how I'm doing with math, I'm pretty open with them about how difficult it was and now with where I'm at. I have gotten marks before and I will put that test on the fridge right next to their artwork like, this is my this is my badge of honour, I am so proud of this. They have been genuinely proud of it. Even little things, you know how kids at school will be asked to write an essay about their family, or my son recently had to write an essay called, “My Hero”, and he made it about me.

V: Oh my god that is so cute!

J: It was cute and it definitely pulled at heartstrings because he wrote everything that a mother would want her child to write about her. They talk about me doing power engineering, they actually make note to say it. That's to me an indication that there is a level of pride there that they're happy I'm doing it. They talk about it with their friends and they'll make little comments here and there as much as a teenager talks about their parents.

V: I think the most important thing is it doesn't even have that much to do with math but the fact that they're seeing their mother struggle with something that is so hard and not give up. I think that's one of the most important things we can do for kids and that's why I always have such a problem with the way we just steal math away from kids, we don't even give him the chance. As soon as they're struggling, we say it's not for you because what you can discover when you fight for something that doesn't come to you right away, the lessons you can gain from that are just so much greater than the content itself. I think that's amazing.

Okay so I’m going to ask you the two final questions that I ask every guest, you probably know what they are but let’s pretend you don’t. Number one, what would you change about the way math is taught in school?

J: I would say that if anything it should be teachers teaching math who they themselves are confident in math. I have seen teachers even teach my own children math where that teacher wasn't confident and that has spilled over into how my kid learned math. 

V: And how do you think it spills over? As in they don’t get taught correctly or that they have a lack of confidence themselves?

J: That teacher has a lack of confidence in themself for teaching math and kids are smart, kids are so intuitive and they can tell if you really do understand this and if you don't. I have witnessed it, I had a teacher that taught my kids in early grades, like in grade 2 and grade 3, and those teachers were not confident in math and it did affect how my oldest daughter definitely took on math as she's grown up. I, myself never really had a memory of a teacher that wasn't confident in math so I can't really pinpoint a time in my early childhood where math just kind of went in left field for me. I could definitely see it in my own children in how they were taught math.

V: Okay that’s amazing, great answer. My last question, my favourite question is what would you say to someone who says that they're not a math person?

H: Well of course I would say if I can do it, you can do it because if you had any inkling of how low of a level I was at with my confidence in math and to see the kinds of math that I'm doing right now, and the different types of equations that I'm able to figure out now, and the formulas that I can calculate, I actually even myself can't believe that I am capable of doing this stuff. It really is a matter of just going for it and knowing that if it's something that really matters to you, like this program matters to me, you will find a way. Whether it's through watching YouTube videos or seeking out podcasts like this one, I sought out the help from my daughter's high school math tutor, anything like that to help is definitely going to be the key to your success. When it really comes down to it, it is your mindset. If you're not willing to do it and keep driving for it, then it's easy to give up on it.

V: I just think that is literally so well said. The most important takeaway, and I hope for anyone who's listening to your story, that that's something they take away from it. It's really okay if you don't give a shit and don't want to learn math, that's completely fine. But if you do want to, there is a way for everyone. That is literally why the saying, what’s that saying, when there's a will there's a way.

J: When there’s a will there’s a way.

V: Yeah that’s why the saying exists, it’s actually true! I think it’s okay to not have that will but you need to know that if you want to learn math, that is a possibility. I think what often happens is people try the traditional ways, they’re like, ‘Ugh, whatever. I did my homework, I went to class, I can't do it, it’s not for me.’, that's not what when there's a will there's a way means. It means that you will find anyway, like you're saying, those extra resources like your daughter’s high school math tutor, whatever those things are... Yeah I think that's really fucking cool so thank you so much!

J: Thank you!

V: I can’t wait for you to send us a picture of you in the trade.

J: Yes!

V: Are you going to be wearing a hard hat?

J: Oh there will be hard hats, personal protective equipment.

V: The glasses, I want the hat. Okay, cool. Get us a pic at some point.

J: I will.

V: Oh my god, thank you SO much for sharing your story with us. It was a literal absolute pleasure and I cannot wait for you to send us a picture of you in your PPE, and hard hat and whatever other lingo cool shit you are going to be wearing once you’re a power engineer. Okay talk to you soon!

J: Okay, thank you!

V: Okay I don't know about you guys but I'm a total sucker for heartwarming ‘adult relearns math after years of math denial’ stories. SO amazing! I can't wait to see pics of Jill powering her way through power engineering and I will definitely keep you guys posted and plaster those PPE pics all over my socials the second I get them. As always, you can find all our show notes at themathguru.ca/maththerapy. Remember to follow us on all social media @themathguru and of course a reminder that Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia, produced by Sabina Wex and edited by David Kochberg. Our theme song is Waves by my very own band, Goodnight, Sunrise. Guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or needs to hear someone else getting it, please share this podcast and write a quick review on whatever podcast app you use - it makes a huge difference. I am so determined to change the culture surrounding math and I really need help, so please help me spread the word. That's all for this week, stay tuned for our next episode, it comes out next Thursday.