The majority of people have a subject they were never good at. Unless your a genius or have a photographic memory, kudos to you. But the rest of us have to work twice as hard to achieve a passing grade to at least pass the class. Some of us have been told, horrible things that discourages us and we just give up. Verbal words, that have a huge negative impact on us. Now, this paper isn’t to make you feel sorry about yourself, this paper is to reflect on your ups and downs on the subject you had the most trouble at. I know its scary admitting your faults but how can you move one from your faults if you don’t admit them? But while admitting your faults you also have your strengths, even if it was determination to keep going, that is something you should be proud of, because you never gave up.
Past-
This world can be so cruel and some people have experienced many road blocks along the way when it came to having an education. Some people have experienced racism while others experienced far more crucial life changing moments. I never experienced that, and I thank all my lucky stars for that. I don’t think I ever took into consideration that my gender, race, culture, language, and economic status could have an affect on my mathematical experience. I simply thought that I wasn’t smart enough. And maybe also because when your young, you don’t pay attention to stuff like that, until you reach adulthood. As you age, things become more clearer for you and you start noticing things like that. But for now, I have yet to experience such cruelty.
At first, I was thinking what did I bring to the table, when I sat there in class, knowing my math teachers didn’t believe I was cut out for this. I won’t lie, I did give up in the end, because I fina...
... middle of paper ...
...ct. Once you find a wonderful professor, who teaches with clarity and it makes actually sense to you, everything just seems so much lighter. Once you push past painful experiences and have room to try again and try new things you never know what you might achieve.
I can’t predict what might happen in the future, determining if I continue to excel in math, But what I can say is, if I continue on the path I am on, math might become a subject I can actually enjoy. And thats saying a lot, coming from someone who detested math with the passion, I hope I continue to experience life changing moments like these in the future. And a special thanks to Mrs. Bravewoman, for giving me the opportunity to believe again. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would be here where I am today. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and I hope to continue my mathematical future with you.
It is widely known that racial and gender discrimination appeared from an early time which is still influence today’s society. The term Black American is used rather than African American because many Caribbeans and Africans identify themselves by their country of origin or use the term Black, and the federal government, along with Whites, will classify them as Blacks (ATWATER,1999). The first black president appearance is a great change for the racial discrimination which be expected to change the status of the black. For the education in America, the black children always face to the tough situation. These Black American children now enter school with various language genres, patterns of behavior, motivations, attitudes, and expectations that are either unacknowledged or seen as developmentally deficit by their science teachers. If they are considered developmentally deficient, then teachers feel like the students must be remediated before science learning can begin (Figueroa & Garcia, 1994). This remediation usually includes helping Black American students “to become ‘successful’ in terms of a traditional white, male, heterosexual, and middle class conceptualization of success” (Powell, 1997, p. 14).In a long period, the black is considered as the representative of poverty and slow-witted. On average, Black American students understand the four basic mathematical operations, can compare
‘I am going to fail’ was the very first thought that crept into my mind on that very first day of class. Before I stepped into the classroom on the first day, I felt pretty good about my writing. I had done previously well in English, and didn’t think this class would be much of a challenge. This all changed on the first day of school, when my professor talked about the level of reading and writing expected for this class. I remember thinking ‘I don’t read, why couldn’t I have been born someone who likes to read?!’ Since this moment on the very first day of class, I have grown immensely through hard work. In this essay, I will explain what I have learned over the course of this class about myself, and about writing.
As a daughter, I always have tremendous admiration toward my father. I respectfully consider him as my role model as well as my behavior guide. My father, who is a successful business man, surprisingly has great passion for math and solving its problems. That might explain why I take interest in Math when I was at a very young age. People usually describe me as a patient, passionate and hard-working person. Growing up in Vietnam and having a chance to study abroad in the United States have taught me many valuable lessons of life. As a freshman who just entered college, I can speak fluently both Vietnamese and English. I decided to attend University of Nebraska at Omaha not only because of my affection for this beautiful city, but also the belief that UNO is the best place for me to develop my career as well as to achieve the education that I wish. I love traveling and learning about different cultures around the world, which is the reason why I chose international business as my major.
When I read “Proficiency” by Shannon Nichols I really felt for her. I understood and resonated with her story perfectly, especially when she stated “After I failed the test the first time, I began to hate writing and I started to doubt myself. I doubted my ability and the ideas I wrote about.” (83). After I failed my writing assignment I was so embarrassed and didn’t want to write again but obviously, I had to. I always doubt the things I am going to say or which order I am going to organize the essay in. I try so hard to make sure all my sentences are cohesive and all my ideas connect to each other and the main concept but sometimes it just seems that when I keep messing with one little sentence or paragraph I just makes things worse.
I also learned that mathematics was more than merely an intellectual activity: it was a necessary tool for getting a grip on all sorts of problems in science and engineering. Without mathematics there is no progress. However, mathematics could also show its nasty face during periods in which problems that seemed so simple at first sight refused to be solved for a long time. Every math student will recognize these periods of frustration and helplessness.
For some reason, you want to know about my math life. It's about as interesting as my social life, which is pretty non-existent (this is my attempt at humor. I’m trying, I really am). I took Algebra 1 Honors at Frost in 7th grade. My teacher was Ms. Healy. I liked her as a teacher because she taught efficiently and she was funny. I took Geometry Honors at Frost in 8th grade; my teacher was Mrs. Beach. I hated Geometry mostly because I had an awful teacher. I ended up teaching myself from the textbook. I took Algebra 2 honors because I didn't feel like taking a regular course because I have some sort of dignity I feel I have the need to maintain. I've always liked math to some extent, so I chose honors. In Algebra 2 Honors, I hope to get at
One of the major reasons I dropped out was the fact that my Math t...
Halloween, October 2013, I was sitting in my math classroom contemplating the last two of the thirty math problems I needed to complete. My math teacher, Coach Cov, was sitting at his desk thumbing through papers. Frowning at my answer for a simple algebra problem, I decided request assistance from my best friend Delaney, who was sitting in front of me.
While looking over my transcripts, I observed that my grades for the most part either remained bad or got worse second semester. Despite how I perform in those classes I have the easiest time understanding math, and the hardest time with history. The trends in my transcript correlate to how I’ve been my entire life, I give up easily. Once the smallest thing goes wrong I give up rather than trying persevering. I choose to keep rolling down a hill because it's easier, rather than to push myself to climb it.
This deep dive into self-knowledge occurred when I received my first progress report for second semester Ninth Grade Algebra. To say that I was put into a space of shock and awe is an understatement; I was outraged. I was completing all my assignments and turning in homework, but my poor test grades were obliterating my grade.
His name was Ethan, a sophomore in Math 3 that did not grasp the fundamentals of PEMDAS. I met Ethan when my teacher assigned me to tutor him after school for extra credit. I didn't know much about him, other than that he was struggling in math. As our session went on, I became more and more frustrated as he struggled with basic concepts of math. As a result, I gave him more homework, so he could practice concepts he didn't understand and told him I expected them done the next time we met. "Did you finish the worksheets?" I asked him the next time we met. He shook his head. "Well maybe it's just the first week" I said to myself. But then came the second week, and third, and fourth.
When someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up, I say that I do not know, but I do know. At a very young age, I discovered my passion for the field of medicine. Growing up, my parents were very sick, and even though they would not admit it, I could tell they were constantly in pain. My father had diabetes and my mother chronic arthritis. I hated to see them suffer and promised myself that one day I would help them. After my older brother went into nursing, he began to help people like my parents; I knew that was what I wanted to do one day. I wanted to make people feel better just like he did, and I am doing everything I can to make my dreams a reality.
Coming from a family who didn’t even graduate high school, who is trying his best to get a higher education and display the obstacles being faced throughout my life. In addition, the society will question themselves to see that some certain people with a different race or ethnicity are going to college. Above all, it creates a grudge against the terrible comments about how can these people go to college or have a higher education. Even if you are different, “It’s not your fault you were born with white skin…”, or any skin color, getting a higher education is something that improves the social, political, and economic factors of the nation (Crosley-Corcoran 1). It doesn’t matter what other people tell me or anyone, we make our lives and improve our community. Life without education or ideas from different identities, will destroy the relations between race, gender, or other
Fractions were the first challenge from math that I had to fight through, in which eventually I was placed in a Special Education class and I was diagnosed with a learning disability. From 4th grade to 7th grade, I had extra help in Math in the Special Education class. I kept struggling with fractions and decimals, such as dividing and multiplying them. After some time, I was told that I have advanced in my skills in Math and I was put out of the class, but they gave me the option to go to the class whenever I thought I needed help in Math and in anything I needed extra time or help in. As I entered my freshman year of high school at Carver Military Academy, I took Algebra l class and Math Navigator class. I had my ups and downs in those classes. Even though I had those two mathematical classes in my first year of high school, I really didn’t struggle through them because it was just learning about the distance formula, absolute volume, factoring numbers, finding the greatest common factor, converting fractions and decimals since it was pretty neutral to
Through out this course we have learned how the lives that we live and the person we are is impacted by a number of dimensions. These dimensions include the economy, discrimination, lack of resources and the availability to good education. These dimensions hold a lot of weight in our lives and most of them we have no control over. For some people unfortunately, they innately inherit certain disadvantages ranging from where their family comes to the color of their skin or even the neighborhood they were born into. Those factors are uncontrollable and yet still deeply effect the quality of their life. Not only do these factors have an impact on us as children they have a presence over us all the way into adulthood.