The Arts Don't Count.

After 4.5 years in UVIC's Social Sciences Department and 1 year at SFU doing daily academic workouts that would make even the strongest Olympian crumble followed by evenings of Women's studies induced identity crises, political delirium and approximately 700 pages of academic writing to date, I am bewildered as to why I am suffering through a very expensive grade 11 math class in university to prove my academic ability.

Administration would not approve of this blog posting but quite frankly I don't approve of being dragged through arithmetic misery for the sake of numerically quantified standardization of knowledge.

I understand the reasoning behind quantitative logic and problem solving but degrading my ability to move forward academically after 5.5 years in university with a solid grade point average makes me really question this system. Not only are we having to pay for this class but it counts toward or in some cases- against- a students grade point average without any added credits. YET in order to move forward or take other Q classes to graduate this requirement must be met. People have different abilities not everyone problem solves from one standard mathematical form. In addition being told that as an arts student this is a necessary part of my degree education. I beg to differ. After nearly completing my degree elsewhere surrounded by profoundly intelligent and insightful academics I  strongly suggest that this notion is FALSE.

Math was a traumatic experience for me in high school, it degraded my confidence and as it does currently, math took up an incredible amount of my study time which would have been better spent on other more useful areas. I passed grade 11 math and continued to graduate high school with an average in the mid 90 percent range and won every school award there was...outside of athletics...and yet both then and now I am being told that in order to qualify for my own future I must battle out math and science because those are the areas that really count.

Math and science are the academic soundboards of knowledge, the arts including social SCIENCES and humanities are flighty so in order gain real tangible life skills and learn how to problem solve we all have to bow down and declare math and science as being real academia.

This was a personal and very frustrated letter, I am aware, but I also know there are many others in the same situation thus I am speaking out.