In the Third Grade at Sherman Elementary School in Cranford, NJ. we started on learning the multiplication tables. Up to that time, Philip had done quite well in school (Except "Penmanship" - that's another story). But Philip (now "Grampa") had a VERY hard time with the multiplication tables.
He could remember the tables up to 5 well enough, but was quite lost beyond that. Above 5 he resorted to some lower grade arithmatic. For instance, for 7 X 8 he would figure 5 X 8 is 40 and 2 X 8 is 16, so 7 X 8 is 40+16=56. The other kids in the class just learned that 7 X 8 is 56...and all the other products up to 12 X 12=144. The ones who learned beyond that, like to 15 X 15 or higher, probably went on to become mathemeticians or physicists or engineers.
Philip's failed attempt to get around the problem by cheating is another story - at this point I'll just report that it was the first and last time he cheated in school - or anyplace else. A more important lesson than the multiplication tables.
For quite a while after that Philip felt he was not very good at math - even though he finally did sort-of learn the multipication tables up to 12 X 12. A bright spot came in the eigth grade, when everyone was given an aptitude/placement test for ALGEBRA which would be taught in the ninth grade. Philip scored very high in that and did very well in algebra.
However, from that point on, it was sort of down-hill in math. While he did fairly well in plane geometry, he didn't enjoy it and didn't much like the way he had to learn it. He didn't take any more math courses in high school, and only took what was required in that line for his college degree.
In college he had to take only two math-related courses for his degree in the "Foreign Service" program in the school of Business and Public Administration. One was called "Business Math 101" which was a creampuff course -- all Philip remembers from that is "sixty days at six per cent is one percent."
The other required course in college was Introductory Statistics -- the bugaboo course for 99% of the student body. The teacher was John Shirer (brother of William L. Shirer who documented the Third Reich). Professor Shirer had some of his brother's flair for making facts come alive. In addition, the course started with making graphs from statistical tables. This made Philip feel like he was really on top of the course - he had colored bar graphs at his father's office when he was about 6 years old. (Looking back on it today, he realizes that his father gave him that task simply to keep him busy and out of trouble when at the office. Philip was lousy at coloring, and probably scribbled more than coloring, but he felt like he was really helping and he sort of got the idea of the graphs presenting the numaeric information.) Anyway, Philip enjoyed the statistics course which most of the other students hated. He "aced" it and later was given a student job at the University's Bureau of Business Research (which John Shirer directed.)
So despite being very slow at learning the multiplication tables and having very spotty background and abilities in math, Philip spent much of his career as an applied statistician - even teaching introductory statistics at the college and graduate levels.
There are several "lessons" to be drawn from this, but one werth remembering is..."Don't be too quick to disclaim your abilities and talents. They may simply be waiting for the right conditions to blossom."