I don’t like math. I haven’t liked math since the fifth grade, when an 89 percent on an exam led to an onslaught of tears and a talk from a bewildered elementary school principal who informed me that an 89 was in fact equivalent to a B+ (yikes).

As the years went on, my math grades only got worse. I took AP BC Calculus my senior year and received a lowly “1” on the AP exam. I struggled to even pass that class while my friends’ high school plans revolved around shopping for prom dresses and decorating graduation caps.

The fact that “the chain rule” now sounds to me like some kind of unspoken rule Piper Chapman learns from inmates on “Orange is the New Black” is probably OK, but, despite my general hatred of math, I still think I should know how to do it.

While Washington University students often complain about the uselessness of general requirements and about how difficult they are to fulfill, I found that the math course I took last semester (which I enrolled in primarily because of the Applied Numeracy requirement) was more interesting than I gave it credit to be.

No, I’m not a great mathematician—I don’t even remember how to do basic logarithms. But should Wash. U. really allow me to entirely abandon a set of skills I’ve been working on since kindergarten?

We all have strengths and weaknesses; we all excel—and falter—in different areas. But that doesn’t mean that we should only explore what we’re good at, which is what I, like many other students, would do if Wash. U. had no requirements. With no requirements, it would be easy enough for us all to stick to what we’re good at, to take courses in the one or two areas we like the most, to never push ourselves outside our comfort zones.

When marketing to high school students, universities tend to talk about how their requirements are really easy to complete or to brag about how their open curriculums make it easy for students to just take what they want to take (I’m looking at you, Brown University). The only colleges I can think of that tried to sell me on their mandated courses were Columbia University and the University of Chicago, schools that boast requirements that are far more extensive than Wash. U.’s.

I don’t think that Wash. U.’s requirements should be stricter; the current ones are difficult enough to complete. But I don’t bemoan their existence, and I think we should all welcome the opportunity to step outside our comfort zones and study something that maybe doesn’t come as naturally to us.

What’s more, with major and minor requirements, I sometimes feel almost guilty for taking a course that won’t provide “useful” credits. With general requirements, I have more opportunities to explore areas outside of my major, to take classes that are interesting but aren’t necessarily a means to an end.

I welcome these opportunities to explore. While I’m the first to admit that few of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) courses actually sound palatable (read: bearable) to me, and that I’m trying to get them out of the way as soon as possible, I still think I might stand to learn something. And that premed biology major who never wants to write an essay for the rest of his life might stand to learn something by taking College Writing I.