What is it that you will just never comprehend no matter how many times it is explained or how often you see it? I don’t mean things like relativity or quantum chromodynamics or trans-warp conduit design or anything that would typically require intense study. I mean things that fall within your normal range of abilities and knowledge but which just do not make sense.
For me one that came up recently is Excel pivot tables. I can look at individual cells and eventually work out what the value represents but I just can not grok them as a whole. (Please don’t try to explain them as it’s a waste of time for both of us!) I use Excel all the time and can work with data in all sorts of formats but pivot tables are just random numbers for all the good they do me.
Actually, relativity is one of them for me. I bought a book (that predated the “Dummy” series by decades) called “Relativity in Pictures.” I was very excited! I looked at the first few pages. Yeah! Got that! Next few pages. Yeah! I’m on top of this! And then I hit that wall where I went, “Du-u-u-u-uh” and drool started dribbling down my chin.
Then there are those words that I NEVER remember the definitions of, like hermeneutics or solipsistic.
And I totally don’t get key signatures in music. This is despite numerous years of piano lessons as a yute and many more years singing as an adult. I can identify the obvious ones (C, G, F, maybe A), but I can’t look at a key signature and say, “Oh, yes. This piece is written in A-flat Minor.” Doesn’t matter to me as a singer. Thank Og for relative, not absolute, pitch.
Oh I’m with you on musical theory. It makes absolutely no sense at all to me. I do get relativity though. I think it has to do with the age that you learn it. I was 17 at the time. Relatively young, so it wasn’t hard. It’s kind of difficult at some points, but if I had to go back over it again I could get it.
Maths? sine, cosine, and tangent. No matter how many times I was doing trigonometry I hated every single second. Easily the worst subject for me. It made absolutely no sense and took me right out of any understanding I had of anything. And don’t get me started on the bizarro versions thereof.
(Afraid this doesn’t reflect well on me.) My wife has explained to me the difference between first cousin, second cousin, etc. and once-removed, twice-removed, etc., but it just doesn’t stick.
Music theory, particularly written music, for me, too. It may as well be hieroglyphics. And I play six or seven instruments, and did so professionally from the time I was 14. Show me how it goes, I’ll learn it right away and play it back to you. Give me some sheet music, and you’ll have the performance over with and the audience will have gone home before I decipher the first line. I can never remember suspended, diminished or augmented, and I play those chords all the time. I know where they are. I know what they sound like, but don’t ask me to tell you what they’re called.
I’m so glad to see other people struggle with musical theory! I so badly wanted to learn piano when I was younger, but I was told without being able to read music I will never be much of a player… and I just cannot make sense of the notes, the scales, anything, and so many people tried to help.
There are also a heap of scientific ideas I don’t grasp very well, but they don’t bother me so much… I’ve never really wanted to play quark :o
I’ll be happy to very slowly and simply explain music theory to any of y’all if you’ll do the same for me with geometry. I spent about 90% of my time in geometry class in high school doing this: . A in music theory, D in geometry. That was me.
Stocks and the stock market. None of it makes any sense - I have tried and tried but I cannot understand it - things like the "depression and the “crash” stumps me.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of other things too.
Radio. My husband is a ham and I ask him the same questions over and over and over and over. “Why can’t we get that station here? Is it the hill in the way? What’s the difference between AM and FM? Why? Why? Why? Why?”
He hasn’t strangled me yet.
Oh, and my eyes glaze over when it comes to electricity. I’ll admit that I don’t even try.
I’m in the music theory camp too. I’ve played instruments since I was 10 and I still can’t tell you anything about chords, and I suck at improv.
I also suck at programming. HTML, JavaScript, ASP - that kind of stuff I rock at. But we’re implementing C#/ASP.NET now at work and I can’t grasp the internals of it, as I have no “real” programming background. I can copy and paste and manipulate copy/pasted script till the cows come home but I know it’ll be years before I can implement it on my own. We went through this with me and ASP and it took just a lot of doing and repeating before I got to be any good at it.
Multiplication by 9. I know it’s odd, but that’s where my mental block is. I can multiply double-digit numbers easily in my head. I can run off all the other digits’ tables from rote, but I actually have to use a calculator, ask or add on my fingers if I have to do 9’s.
I can get music theory, relativity, electricity, pretty much everything that I have tried to comprehend comes easily. Multiplication by 9 astounds me. There is just some weird mental block that does not allow me to remember the table. People have repeatedly shown me the “trick” to it, but I just can never do it without help. Bah!
I understand relativity, and can program, but stuff like which stains need to be soaked or which dishes need to be washed in cold water… forget it.
I can’t read most cursive writing. I’m not talking IT-person handwriting (nobody but the person who wrote that can read it), but not normal cursive, even cursive that most people think is good handwriting.
. A in music theory, D in geometry. That was me.