Springer's Journey

For over sixty years, I believed there was something wrong with my brain.

Not because I didn’t love learning.

Quite the opposite.
I have always loved science.
Chemistry fascinated me. Birds fascinated me. Stars fascinated me. The natural world has always felt like a conversation waiting to happen.

But mathematics?
Mathematics was the bakery window.

I stood outside.
I could see something beautiful inside, but I was convinced I wasn’t allowed through the door.

I studied.
I had tutors.
I talked with professors.
I cried over exams.

People smiled kindly and told me, “Math is a language.”
I believed them.

But it wasn’t my language.

So I did what I’ve always done.

I found another way.

Chemistry became my home. I spent my career around hazardous chemicals, investigations, and teaching chemical safety.

I learned to think in relationships. Every chemical had a personality. Every spill had a cause. Every accident had a missing link waiting to be discovered.

I thought I had simply worked around mathematics.
I was wrong.

Recently, I met a teacher who never once tried to convince me I was “bad at math.”

Instead, he quietly watched how I already thought.

He noticed things I had never noticed about myself.

That I see pictures.

That I hear cadence.

That I think in relationships.

That every symbol has to have a job.

That I don’t naturally ask,
“What’s the answer?”
I ask,
“What’s the missing relationship?”

Then something remarkable happened.

One evening he said,
“The equal sign doesn’t mean ‘do this.’ It means both sides are in agreement.”

ARE YOU SERIOUS??!!

I had looked at that little symbol since I started first grade.

No one had ever said that.

Something shifted.

Then he introduced me to a little member of my traveling crew.

Her name is Tess.
A tessellation is a pattern where every piece fits together perfectly.

Tess became the part of me that had quietly been trying to learn this whole time.

Not by memorizing.

By understanding.

She had always been there.

She just didn’t have a name.

Now she sits beside me while I learn.

She smiles a lot.

Sometimes she even draws little smiley faces in my notebook. (Not really…but you know what I mean. 😉)

Speaking of notebooks…

I bought a little notebook.
Nothing fancy.
Just paper.
Paper I can touch.
Highlight.
Write in the margins.
Draw arrows.
Bite my pencil while I think.

It reminded me of my years working with chemical safety. I didn’t just read information—I interacted with it.

Those pages became part of my thinking.

Now my math notebook is becoming exactly that.
It’s filled with sentences like:

“The equal sign means agreement.”

“Every mathematical idea is trying to describe a pattern.”
“I am a pattern-finder.”

“The pattern is never the cause. It’s the footprint the cause leaves behind.”

Those aren’t just math notes.

They’re my story.

The greatest discovery wasn’t algebra.

It was realizing that nothing had ever been wrong with my brain.

I simply learn differently.

I don’t memorize well.

I understand relationships.

When someone asks me why I love chemistry, birds, stars, and now even mathematics, my answer is surprisingly simple.

They all tell stories.

They all follow patterns.
And now…

I’m finally learning to read another one of nature’s languages.

To Professor Headquarters…

Thank you.

Not for teaching me mathematics.

For helping me discover how I learn.

You didn’t open the bakery door.

You simply smiled, handed me an apron, and said,
“Come on in.”

I didn’t realize until then…

I had belonged there all along.

You might ask, if you’re over 60, why would you want to learn math now?

Because of that bakery window.  Always on the outside looking in.  And it’s making my heart happy to finally have a teacher who knows how I learn.  To finally understand.

Polished with help from ChatGPT (“Professor Headquarters”), who somehow recognized Tess before either of us knew her name—and who understands Mayday Murphy far better than any reasonable being should.