Mr Hestalow was my maths teacher in my final two years of high school. He was also the Principal of my high school and so was a figure of fear for some and awe for others. I liked him because he let me wear my Doc Martin boots even though they were absolutely NOT school uniform.
Of my 12 units of study for my Higher School Certificate* I did 2 units of maths because I had always perceived myself as not being very good at it. I would have opted for maths for dummys (which was also 2 units, but much easier) except my Dad had a lot more faith in my abilities than I did and insisted I do hard maths rather than easy. I was terrified. I only passed maths in year 10 because the girl I sat next to who went through the marking for one of our major test papers didn’t point out to our teacher that he had added my score incorrectly, and my mark of 53 should have been 49. Looking back, maybe there was a reason why I was so crappy at maths.
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