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Numbers and nightmares

Everyone has certain fears in life. Most of those fears are silly ones like being scared of cockroaches or some slightly more serious like the fear of heights. Mostly harmless fears that remind you of their presence once in a while and otherwise lie dormant. Unless ofcourse it turns out to be a life-altering phobia, which I am guessing is relatively uncommon among most normal people. So, the point of ranting about the whole story of fears is - I have one. Its the fear of failing in a math paper. Now, you may say that its very common and most people have a fear or exams. Atleast most people who have gone through the Indian system of education are scarred through life with this incredible fear of exams. So, yes - I fear exams, especially exams dealing with numbers and mathematics. I wake up almost every night with a sweaty forehead and shivering hands believing that my life is doomed because I have failed a maths paper. It takes me a couple of minutes to realise that its just a dream and my life has other potential reasons to be doomed and the maths paper in question was long written and done with. And this is a recurring dream. Now this has got me thinking. Why is mathematics so scary? What is it about numbers that make them especially incomprehensible? Or am I just mathematically challenged?

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