“I kind of hated it, actually. I always felt like I was bad at it. Until I started taking your class this semester. For the first time, it feels like it makes sense to me, like I actually understand what I’m doing. It’s like a switch flipped inside my head or something, I dunno. And now I kind of…like math?” He looked up at her uncertainly.
Mia’s smile grew wider as a lump of pride formed at the back of her throat. It was what every teacher hoped to hear. She’d gotten through to someone. Overcome a student’s aversion to math and infected them with her love of the subject.
“I’m glad,” she said, her voice coming out a little hoarse. “I’m really glad.”
“The thing is…” Antonio scratched his chin as he seemed to consider his next words. “I never really wanted to do business. It was just this thing I thought I should do, you know?”
“Is there something else you think you might want to do?” Mia kept her voice neutral, not wanting to influence him with her obvious enthusiasm for her own field.
He leaned back in his chair, seeming more relaxed. “I always had this idea in the back of my head that I wanted to be an engineer. Build things, you know? Like a mechanical engineer, I guess. But since I wasn’t good at math, I always figured it was out of the question.”
“Mechanical engineering is definitely a challenging major, and it does involve a lot of math and science.”
“The science isn’t so bad,” he said, sitting forward again. “I liked physics in high school. It’s what made me think I might want to be an engineer.”
“There’s a lot of math involved in high school physics,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but it was different somehow? I didn’t mind it as much when I understood what I was doing the math for.”
Mia nodded in understanding. It was a complaint she’d heard from a lot of people. The math they’d learned in high school had felt pointless, because it had seemed to exist in a vacuum. That was what happened when you taught rote regurgitation of rules, equations, and functions without any grounding in real-world applications.
“So anyway,” Antonio continued, “now I’m wondering if I could handle engineering after all. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s crazy. I just don’t know if I’m smart enough to do all that math.” He sat back with a doubtful look, clearly hoping she’d tell him what to do.
“First of all,” Mia said, “there’s no such thing as smart enough to do math. Your perception of your own mathematical abilities is a product of your education and your environment, not a reflection of your innate intelligence.”
His expression remained dubious, which didn’t surprise her. A secondary education geared toward standardized testing tended to brand students with labels they wound up internalizing. Gifted or not-gifted. Honors or remedial. Passing or failing.
It wasn’t until college and grad school that Mia had fully appreciated what an advantage she’d been given by her private, Montessori-based education—not to mention the resources and implicit support of her parents, even if they hadn’t always been around to help her with her homework at night. Their high expectations hadn’t allowed room for any question of her not being capable or smart enough, and had driven her to push herself in a bid for their approval.
Antonio had likely been told by the state’s standardized tests that math wasn’t his best subject, a message that had been reinforced by his grades in classes that were organized around the material that would show up on those tests. And like most students, he hadn’t had access to additional resources that might have helped him realize his potential. So he’d simply accepted that he wasn’t good at math.
“From what I’ve seen this semester, you’re more than capable of doing the work,” Mia told him, and he sagged with relief. “The more important question you need to ask yourself is if you like mechanical engineering enough to pursue it seriously. Is it work you want to do for the rest of your life?”
Antonio opened his mouth to respond and she cut him off with a raised hand.
“I don’t expect you to know the answer to that yet, and you probably won’t until you’ve taken some engineering courses. But if you’re asking me if I think you can handle it, my answer is an unqualified yes.”
“Really?” Hope brightened his expression for the first time since he’d entered her office. “You think I should