Math Experience In My Life

Being the oldest of four children, it was always hard me to learn things fast. My parents weren’t able to help me with schoolwork because they both dropped out of school at a very young age. As I entered high school, I was terrified of all the hard classes I would be taking. Although I am not the best in every subject, a topic in which I have excelled in is Mathematics.

My passion for mathematics was fixed at the age of ten, on the morning that my mathematics teacher told I would be sitting the Junior Maths Challenge, 'as practice for when you are older'. As I nervously started to answer the questions, a whole world began to open before me. I revelled in the problem solving, answering questions of a nature I had not seen before. My teachers were delighted when I emerged from the exam hungry for more. Since then I have consistently demonstrated my aptitude, achieving gold awards through to senior level, and scoring highly in the European Kangaroo.

As those who love physics or chemistry, or biology, are most likely to understand difficult and complex concepts and be successful in their respective subjects, I became more successful at understanding mathematical concepts as my junior year progressed and as my senior year began. Calculus became an infinitely easier subject and one that I could comprehend with relative ease, even easier than traditionally “easy” subjects for me such as history or language arts. I learned that I could fly through problem sets and enjoy it, and for the first time in my school life, I was the one answering my peers’ questions instead of being the designated clueless classmate. Learning to love something that is so essential to life made me enjoy myself and my life more than I had previously, and I no longer felt the self-doubt of not being “gifted” in mathematics in a group of mathematically “gifted” students. I feel markedly more confident in my mathematical abilities, both presently and in the future as a student majoring in

 The math is something that people usually hate on school. But i don't. I always had facility with calculations. And my love for numbers increased when I firts won a certificat of merit on OBMEP (Brazilian Olympiad of Public School Mathematics).

Since I can remember, math has always been easy and exciting to me. In high school, the only classes I looked forward to involved math – other than sports. Upon entering college at Eastern Oklahoma State College on an academic and cheerleading scholarship, I chose mathematics as my major. When I came to Oklahoma State University in 2011, I was extremely unsure of what I wanted to study. I started out in architectural engineering because I knew that I loved math and numbers, as well as drawing and designing things. After a semester or so, I realized that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would and didn’t think I could build a career with it. I pursued another direction and changed my major to applied mathematics. I still wasn’t happy with my decision but was unsure on what to do next. During my second year at Oklahoma State, I joined the Cowboy Baseball Diamond Dolls. After getting to know some of the girls, I learned that some of them were in the sports management program. They all

There are an abundant amount of subjects that peak my interests, but mathematics will always be the one subject that intellectually excites me. At times, it is able to both challenge me to the point of frustration, but it later gives me excessive excitement and happiness for overcoming the challenge. Similarly, it is like a wave flooding in shore because it is at first harsh and difficult, but it gradually smoothes and simplifies. It is a subject that I can fully interact and manipulate it to the best possible way of understanding it, which I fondly love because I learn better hands-on. However, it was truly benevolent instructors, who increased my love in math and enlighten a new way of

I found not only Consumer Math but Geometry to be the two most difficult areas in which I struggled the most. In realizing this, I sought out the necessary help needed in better grasping the two different subjects of math. As I have later come to notice, my family often times does not understand me when I voice to them that I enjoy figuring complex equations out. Often times, they will ask me to solve a problem for them because not only do I enjoy it but I am able to figure it out with more ease than they are. When I was younger and even now, I will sit and figure things such as my bills and paychecks out to a penny. I use to have notebooks full of math figures that I would try to solve just for sheer entertainment along with a dozen or more Sudoku books that I have either worked on or completed. To me, Math is a way to relax when to most other people it is found to be a bit stressful. I love how Math allows you endless possibilities to continuing education. With the knowledge of numbers, you are able to obtain a job in a multitude of professions. Math opens the door to so much insight into ones personal as well as professional

Math used to be my favorite subject in elementary school. It used to be so simple where the equations used were clear to understand and proving your answer by showing work did not take too much time. Going into middle school things changed and became way too complicated. You had to learn equations to use for different problems and know which situation called for which equation to use. I got my first taste of Algebra in middle school. Things became more difficult in high school. I struggled in Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, and the science classes that were based on math. Physics was the hardest class because of the equations. It didn’t help that I could not see how to apply the math in the real world while being a teenager. In

Remember going into second grade and fearing those one minute division tests? I remember very clearly how afraid and intimidated I was. I panicked because I was scared that I was not going to get a good grade on it. To my surprise, I did not get a high score on it compared to my classmates. I was devastated because I had tried really hard on it. After that, I hated math until seventh grade. Math was my worst subject, and I acknowledge I was terrible at it. I hated it so much that after years of hating it, I developed a passion for math. After some years of practicing math, I fell in love with it. Entering middle school, Algebra was introduced. I loved Algebra because I was not only adding numbers, I was solving for certain variables at the

I have always considered myself a mathematician; however, that did not keep this subject from being difficult. Math has a glorious way of growing you up. For me, it began in the first grade where I was introduced to the multiplication table; my instructor used to test us with mental exams and I remember enjoying it like I was playing a game and winning.

Math is a subject that I have struggled with for a very long time; it is something that I always set aside. Math is something that I never saw myself using in my future and I thought if I put it off it would just disappear. When I came to the University I had to take Math 100 and Math SAX, which, unfortunately set me back on finishing math quite a bit because I did not put in the effort as much as I should have, and the amount of work they gave, was quite an overload. I took those courses twice and was still not put into a Math course at the University. That is when I started to push math away, but I have realized I cannot put it off and math is definitely important and we do need to know the subject no matter where we go in life or regardless

Since elementary school, I have always found myself fully engaged in math classes. In third grade, I began to speed up my education by completing two courses in one year. I repeated this in fourth grade to get even further ahead of my classmates. Due to my passion for math, I continued to pursue the subject throughout middle school and ended up at the very top of my class in math upon graduation. I also continued along this path in high school and by my senior year I will have taken every math course that has ever been offered to me. I enjoy the subject because it fosters inventiveness and challenges me to find new ways to solve problems. Math has allowed me to think in a logical manner in all situations and is the reason for my success in

My father always encouraged me to do well in school, and he was very proud of me. He always told me the importance of math and how being good at it would offer me a good career, but I was a teenager. To me, him telling me to do my math so I can get a good job ranked right next to him telling me to take out the trash. I needed more encouragement. I needed proof that math was actually used for something. Not one teacher ever pulled me aside and said, "Hey you’re good at this. This

As a mathematics major, the concept that most people overlook is that I did not choose to study mathematics because I do well at it; I chose to study mathematics because it makes me smarter. In fact, all throughout junior high and high school I was in remedial mathematics classes and worse, I did not even place into a freshman year mathematics class in high school. I had to re-take 8th grade mathematics. However, something about mathematics excited me. Maybe it was the fact that mathematics never came easy to me and I wanted to prove to myself that not only could I pass mathematics classes, I could actually understand and excel at them. For me, mathematics is not about the arbitrary numbers, trivial solutions, meaningless formulas, or repetitive computation: it is about the progress of knowledge and human understanding.

Mathematics has always been a difficult subject for students. Many children have developed phobias and barriers towards mathematics, which prevail into adulthood, thus limiting their potential. This limitation implies problems of learning, resulting in the child a sense of inferiority.