Solving For “x”

All those years growing up I used to ask myself “Why do we have to learn all this stuff?” I was referring to the math lessons in school. My friends and I would always wonder how solving for “x” was going to help us land a good career. Well, we had to do what we had to do so we rolled with it just waiting for that future job interview feeling fully prepared knowing the answer to the question how fast does light travel, just in case they asked. The speed of light was a tid bit of info that is stuck on the side of my brain where the useless information resides. I am still waiting for someone to ask me what the speed of light is. I bet by the time I am asked I will have forgotten the answer.

I never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the draw so sometimes things take a little while to click inside my head. The other day it clicked as I was helping my daughter with her math homework. I finally realized we had to learn all that stuff in school so we can help our kids with homework. Outside of the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division the rest is a time filler. Learning how to write a numeric value in standard form was a waste of time with the invention of online banking. Thinking back to how long we spent learning that, well, that’s a good amount of time we will never get back.

I think it is great that kids are learning computers in school. Computers are the future, obviously. Teaching kids how to navigate through accounting programs such as Quicken and Quick Books as well as Excel and Access will help them immensely in the business field. I taught myself how to use these programs along with some help from my colleagues, and knowing how to use them pays dividends for completing business projects and keeping good records. In fact, the other day my boss wanted a complete analysis on the overtime spending for the last fiscal year. Boy, it was a good thing I learned the Pythagorean theorem (a2+b2=c2) to help me provide him with an accurate spreadsheet of the information he requested.