This I Believe

Math, the dreaded subject that rattles our minds and causes immense stress when test day comes. The class that makes us ask, “Am I actually going to use this in the future?” and “Do I actually care?”

Math, the class that pushes us to be creative and think harder. The subject that shapes our minds and makes us ask, “How can I solve this problem?” and “I wonder if there’s another way to do it.”

I believe in math. Not the classes that teach us about area and perimeter, or derivatives and integrals. By looking behind the large numbers and intimidating equations, we learn life lessons that teach us to stay on path and to question what we are told. This I believe.

When other kids played on the swings, I learned to count. When other kids ran on the fields, I played addition games. When other kids drew pictures on the walls, I wrote the times tables on our windows. I know that everyone is thinking, wow, this kid was a loser. But to me, math was not only fun, but the beginning of a rewarding journey I would face in the future. The most basic in mathematics such as counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are things we all take for granted. In high school we are focusing so much on the variables, logs and exponentials, that we forget that everything we are learning now, stems from those fundamental mathematical properties. In life, this has taught me that what you learn as a child, your manners, your feelings, kindness, experiences, and curiosity, these things never change. And that sometimes, we need to step back and think about where we came from and who we were in order to understand who we have become and where we are going.

As we move into more advanced mathematics, we learn about concepts that are hard to wrap our minds around. Like how the number zero is both nothing and something, and that infinity is never ending. We learn that i is an imaginary number and that you can take the negative of a number. But we never stop to think how can zero be multiplied to something if it's nothing, and if infinity plus 10 is larger than infinity. We don’t question how an imaginary number can exist and why a negative times a negative makes a positive. We accept these facts as the truth because we are told by our teachers and family that that’s just how it is. I’m not disputing the fact that these are true, but saying that what I’ve taken from these impossible to understand numbers is that it's ok to question concepts that are not easily grasped in order to better your own understanding.

Some of you are probably thinking, “I still don’t understand how any of this math relates to life lessons.” Honestly, it probably doesn’t for you. We are all different in our beliefs and how we learn. Whether it's learning teamwork from a sports field or persevering to perfect a music piece, we all learn in different ways. For me, I believe that factoring equations teaches us to restate things in a different way and that conics teach us that every change comes with a consequence. I believe that our maths tests compare the trials we face in our live and that studying is our preparation for anything thrown at us. I believe in math and the lessons we learn from looking a little deeper. This I believe.