THINGS MATHS TAUGHT ME
No, it’s not the algebra or geometry or addition or subtraction or multiplication or division.
Hey Re-inventors!
Hmm… SO today’s topic is a bit different.
“MATHS?!! I hate maths !!”
That’s what you may have said in some point of your life(or even now) and that’s what I used to say sometime ago. Still, I don’t love maths, but I don’t hate it too!
How I went from zero to getting good scores
Growing up, math was my weakest subject. I could learn some stuff somehow in other subjects to write on the answer sheets BUT maths, phew!
Despite of all the disappointments again and again, not being able to score and not being able to solve questions, I did not leave maths. I had maths till my 12th grade.
The numbers, the word problems, the series, the trigonometry, the derivatives all seemed like a foreign language. No matter how much practice I did, I would do some or the other mistake for sure.
I was good at understanding concepts but sometimes went really deep into the concepts that I got confused myself.
I did not know what to do. I was stuck at this. There came a point that hearing the word “MATHS” was dreadful and make me go away from my house to play with friends so that I don’t have to study maths.
My mother did everything she could to improve my maths, but only to a certain level. My mother had studied medical subjects including biology and thus she was not well acquainted with higher mathematics.
So, a child who is not scoring well in junior classes, lost the support of her mother and the situation became even worse.
My mother then sent me to a tuition teacher when I was in 9th grade. He managed to clear my concepts a bit, but still my performance improved marginally. There was one test in my 9th grade where I could score about 80% marks, but except that all my scores were near about 65–70%. Now, this score is not bad but score was never the problem for me.
The problem was that I was working hard to improve and may be even working more than the high scorers (because my inability to score was something I did not like), but I was not getting the result.
THE OUTPUT DID NOT MATCH THE INPUT, and that irritated the hell out of me!
This continued for 2 more years. When I came to my final year of high school, I started studying properly. I did a lot of self-study for maths instead of relying on tuitions and I think this was the breakthrough moment for me. This was the time when I really started getting maths.
After years of mind-numbing toil, finally I started understanding concepts and the results were also there!
So, enough of my story, let me discuss the most important life skills that I learnt while doing maths:
Patience and Persistence
Boy, maths REALLY requires these two qualities and SO DOES LIFE, RIGHT?
I used to get super irritated when I could not solve questions or problems and even more irritated when my friends were able to do it (because I am super competitive!).
But it then taught me to stick to a problem till I solved it. The problem would really be ticking in my brain for a long time till I found a solution to it.
You really have to keep on trying and trying until you see results. The same happens in life. There are problems that take time to be solved but you cannot rest your hands and throw in the towel! You must have the intestinal fortitude to get up and face it.
It always seems tough on the face of it, but the solution is always right around the corner and you will get it eventually. Drawing a parallel to maths, I used to see some questions which were dreadful and impossible, UNTIL I tried them and at least tried moving forward and then the solution really strikes.
To be a Go-Getter
Many a times, as I mentioned, the question seemed so difficult that I just wanted to give up and go watch TV or something else, but not maths.
Now, when I decided not to give up, I kept staring at the question for hours.
But that is not the way either.
Here, I would give huge credit to my tuition teacher who told me that I should never stare at a question like this. Instead I should pick up my pen and just DO something and keep on DOING SOMETHING, because maths does not happen like that.
I did it and really started to see that my performance improved over a period of time.
The life lesson that I learned from this was that often when we face problems, we keep on sitting and thinking and pondering how will we solve the problem, instead of attacking the problem and solving it on the way.
Till we don’t take the first step, we will not know where the next step is. And I think that is a precious lesson I have learned from mathematics.
I am not a nerd who loves maths, I am just a person who is trying to find and learn skills from different mediums and then telling my story to you all!
I really hope that you all get some value and even if I am able to influence one person, through this, I’ll be more than happy!
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Keep Reinventing Yourself, CHEERS!
