I have no mathematical background at all (I am an orchestra musician), and I did get it to mostly work. It was just that it didn't work for some inputs, and I could never figure out why despite having access to a proper debugger and a good repl (in scheme).

OCB was a breeze in comparison.

Caveat: I never understood the birthday attack from Ferguson on OCB and why it doesn't work on GCM, so I am really not the right person to make any recommendations