A memory of studying Pure Math

Many years ago I went to evening classes and studied Pure Maths.  It wasn't an easy subject, what made it worse was the fact I didn't have much in the way of math skills.  It was how I felt even though I'd done pretty well at O'Level and got a grade B, at A'Level things seemed quite a bit different. It was an entirely different kettle of fish to say the least. So rather than doing the course in two years it took three or maybe it was a one year course which took two, it doesn't matter much now. I did pass it and get a grade E, but that was one of the toughest grades to achieve. One of my math teachers was a small Indian man called Sam Roa. He wore shoes which looked two sizes too big, an oversized jacket, shirt and trousers. He looked a little odd, but he knew his math. He came to every lesson without a lesson plan and would teach straight out of his head. It seemed so often his lectures were unstructured and it was always difficult going from question to answer understanding what he was doing and  how he did it. They were the most frustrating lessons I every had. He seemed a nice enough man, he just didn't really get to grips with the understanding he had to help his pupils understand and go over things slowly and more thoroughly.

I don't know why he came to mind now, because it was many years ago and in all certainty he is likely to be dead, I was in my early twenties then. So it was going on thirty years.  Mr Roa looked old and I just couldn't tell you how old he was so this is why I think he is probably deceased now. The annoying thing was I really wanted to learn math, I had the motivation but it was like coming up against a brick wall. There were very few of us in his classes, if I remember rightly maybe only three pupils in the end sat the final lessons of the course. We all had problems understanding, except I recall for a chinese pupil who already had a talent for algebra and had decided he would just hit every question with algebra in it. Great for him but not for the rest of us. 

Still even today I have some pure math text books on the shelf and I wonder if I could of picked up those subjects better than I did those years ago. I wonder whether everything just gets forgotten and it never comes back again. Could I actually study and understand now? I don't know. Where has all that math gone?