Elara sat stiffly at her desk, glaring at the glowing numbers on the screen in front of her. It was her first math lecture of the semester, and she already felt her frustration building. Why did she have to take this class? Numbers never made sense to her, not the way words or ideas did. Her fingers nervously tapped her pen on the notebook, though she knew deep down that most of it would remain blank.

The lecture hall buzzed with quiet conversation, but Elara barely noticed. She was too busy dreading the inevitable wall of equations that would soon appear. The professor, an energetic man with wild hair and an enthusiasm that was entirely lost on her, strode to the front of the room.

“Welcome, everyone, to Calculus 101! Today, we’re going to dive into the basics of functions, limits, and derivatives. I know math can seem intimidating, but trust me, it’s a language—one that, with practice, anyone can learn.”

Elara almost rolled her eyes. A language? she thought. Math was nothing like a language. It was chaos disguised as logic. She slouched further in her chair as the professor’s cheerful voice continued. Equations began to appear on the board, long strings of numbers and letters that Elara had no interest in deciphering.

The professor moved quickly, scribbling symbols and explaining concepts as though the room was filled with future mathematicians. Elara, meanwhile, was barely following along. Limits? She vaguely remembered something about that from high school, but now it felt like it belonged in a different universe. Her mind drifted, and she began doodling in the corner of her notebook, tuning out the explanation of why limits were important.

As the minutes dragged on, Elara’s frustration grew. The more the professor talked, the more foreign everything seemed. She glanced around and saw other students nodding along or furiously typing notes. It felt like everyone else was getting it, while she was sinking deeper into confusion.

By the end of the lecture, Elara was both exhausted and annoyed. Her notebook was mostly empty, aside from a few half-hearted attempts at the problems the professor had posed. As she packed up her things, she couldn't help but feel a sense of dread for the rest of the semester. She hated math, and no cheerful professor or fancy equation was going to change that.

But as she walked out of the lecture hall, she made a quiet promise to herself: she would get through this, one way or another. She didn’t need to love math—she just needed to survive it.