Remember all those ideas and concepts that I didn’t really learn in Algebra 1? Now I needed to depend on those concepts in the Algebra 2 course. But I didn’t know them. Even though my teacher gave me extra help, I didn’t do very well in that course. Finally, I made it to my last years in high school and took an advanced course in math, Trigonometry. After the course, my teacher, Mr. Peller, sent a note home to my parents along with my grades. “I think it would be better if Joe didn’t take any more math,” he wrote in the note. I’m sure that he had my best interests at heart. He knew that if my grades were bad, I might have difficulty getting into a good university.