Mathematics was my worst subject since kindergarten. My parents and teachers had high expectation of me, and given the competitive environment in China, I had to do well for all subjects. However, mathematics was always the one pulling down my overall performance. I tried many different methods to improve it. I spent extra one hour a day to practice mathematical questions, and went for tuition every weekends. however, these efforts turned in vain eventually.“Was that because of my IQ?”, I wondered.
I disliked my mathematics teacher and mathematics class and things got worse. The concepts were getting increasingly difficult, and they were even harder for me to understand with a poor understanding in the previous concepts. The more I disliked mathematics, the worse results I got. It was a vicious cycle. Aiming for an academically well performing student, mathematics never failed to give me a headache.
One day, I was chatting with a classmate who was good at mathematics, “look at you, just listen to the teacher and do the homework then get full marks easily, because you are smart.” I said enviously. His reply changed my view. He told me that he was not born to be so, but he was very interested in finding out mysterious mathematical concepts since young. He also told me not to put so much pressure on the examination results, focus on the learning process instead. “try to do mathematics homework at first.” he gave me a suggestion. Since primary school, I had a habit, that was, always did mathematics homework at last. It was because I did not want the frustration generated by doing mathematics homework to spoil my mood in doing the following homework. However, I would like to have a try since this suggestion was given by him.
Changing a habit was really a tough thing, especially when I suffered a lot in thinking and configuring the mathematical problem. In fact, I encountered several times when I did not have enough time to complete homework from other subjects in the first month. Gradually, I gained a sense of achievement every time I solved all the problems for the day. Sadly, my mark in the next examination did not improved at all. Then, my mathematical teacher asked me to go to her office and talked to me. I was a bit panic because I had been called to go to her office for countless times in the past, and the theme never changed, which is, asking me to put more efforts. Unexpectedly, she was extremely gentle this time, she said that she could see my progress from recent homework, and she encouraged me to hang on for a longer time and not be discouraged by the examination result. For the first time, I found my mathematics teacher not that annoying.
I kept practicing the new habit, and I finally went out of the vicious cycle. I realise that many people may not be good at doing something inborn, but we can acquire a specific skill with continuous efforts and consistent practice.
Now, I am a university student studying engineering. I will keep learning mathematics and I believe that it would be a pleasant learning journey.
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