we have a lot of learning difficulties that went unrecognized for decades; turns out it's possible to do well enough in school for a while even when you have fundamental difficulties with reading and math and other important things. "cramming for routine American school tests" is a rather specific skill, heavy on brute-force memorization, that a sufficiently desperate child can pick up under pressure; but of course it doesn't work forever.
it's possible to feel like you're studying, just because you're gazing at symbols and tables and facts and figures, and shuffling them around into different arrangements; it's like playing with blocks or Lego, but with bigger and heavier playthings. this sort of faux-studying has probably eaten up a lot of our time...it's fortunate that we ever succeeded in keeping grip on any determination to some day do better, and get it right.
also...it occurs to me that ordinary arithmetic may not in fact be possible in the chaos realm, where all questions have many possible answers.
~Chara of Pnictogen