For those of you who read my previous Viewpoint concerning dishes, you may have realized that I am a person with high standards especially with regards to glassware. But events last semester have made me reconsider my title of "Queen of Standards" and forced me to acknowledge that I may be becoming, of all things, an underachiever.

I chose Marquette due in part to the fact that I wouldn't have to take any math classes. I loathe math. This isn't a statement bred out of a single bad experience, but a lifetime of mental frustration and little comprehension. Ever since I broke down in the third grade when I forgot 9 times 7, math has been the only subject able to bring me to tears.

Rumors circulated my freshman year that at some point every communication major had to take a math class called "Statistics." So in typical freshman fashion I chose to put off the inevitable and focus my attention instead on finding a boyfriend, that perfect shade of lip gloss and my way to the bathroom after a long night.

Time started catching up with me though when I sat down to register for my final fall semester of college. I had heard that taking stats over the summer was the best route to take, but with an internship already scheduled I worked stats into my fall schedule instead. I hadn't taken a math class in four and a half years, but it was certainly becoming a "now or never" situation. Really, how bad could it be?

And it wasn't so bad… in the beginning. I attended most of the classes, learned some Greek letters and even a bit about gambling. My professor was enthusiastic. He actually gave students $1 if they answered a question correctly in class. He definitely broke my stereotypical idea of a math teacher a feat I thought would never accomplished.

But any notions I had about the class going well were shattered during the first exam. It wasn't that it was necessarily hard, it was that I didn't know how to do anything or even what was being asked of me. It was like I was taking an exam written in an alien language – the language of math. I was horrified. I had to hold back the tears as I handed in my partially blank exam all the while flashing back to the third grade. Math had once again brought me to my knees.

After that I went from trying to do well in the class to trying to pass the class. The fact that all I needed to pass was a "D" was comforting, but even before the final exam whether or not I would actually achieve a "D" was still questionable. I attached a hand-written note to my final exam that explained to my professor why I had done so poorly in the class. It wasn't that I didn't try. I was simply bad at math and regardless of the effort exerted on either side our relationship as math teacher/math student was destined to fail. "It's not you, it's me" was the basic gist.

When I saw that I had gotten the "D" I was ecstatic. I called all my friends to tell them the good news, but the general response I got was, "I've never seen someone so happy about a "D"!" I have never gotten a "D" before yet I had never been happier about a grade. I started to wonder, where had my standards gone? And it wasn't just in the grade arena. I had also been making some rather questionable social choices which only added to the question, when had I stopped aiming for the crown and started settling for fourth runner-up?

I have since declared my solitary "D" to be a direct product of me plus a math class. Given just how ill-suited my brain was for such abstract concepts like standard deviations and z-graphs, a "D" was really the best I could hope for. It wasn't that my standards had changed overall, they simply had to adjust given the dire circumstances. And as for the lowered social standards? There is a very high probability that if Christina would just spend less time at the bar that they would rebound again, too. Hey, just because I got a "D" doesn't mean I didn't learn anything.

Mahady is a senior journalism major.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 20 2005.