1. Discuss the subjects in which you excel or have excelled. To what factors do you attribute your success? Use specific examples to illustrate how you succeed.
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.
When I was a child, I wasn’t very proficient in math. It wasn’t until junior high, that I was finally getting the hang of doing all these math problems every day. A factor that helped me achieve good grades was my dedication
I truly find joy in doing multiple math problems one after another using strict formulas, because once I know how it’s done, I’ll never forget it. I, unfortunately, did not get that opportunity as well as I should have during these last two years of school. My grades first started to dwindle down slowly when I got diagnosed with pneumonia and I missed a lot of days and class time instruction. What made everything even worse was when my mother underwent spine surgery and tragically faced life threatening complications, she was helpless. i was the only one to be there to take care of her and drive her to her doctors appointments, do the grocery shopping, cleaning, and working for myself all together. One thing on top of the other, made getting caught up in class seem impossible, I would get further behind before I was even au fait with my missing assignments. Thankfully, I had very accommodating teachers and faculty members who were more than willing to work with me to help see me succeed. The one person I owe the greatest homage and endless gratitude towards is for my administrator Trey Sirman. He helped me the most to get me to a point where I could finally be prolific in my
For the past three years of my high school career, and now my fourth, I have made it an obligation to continually expand my horizons in regards to math; when I cannot fully grasp an idea or concept, rather than giving up, I relentlessly pursue the idea until it is understood. During freshman year, math did not come easily to me. I was forced to go in early some days because, simply, I did not comprehend the concepts. However, taking initiative with my school work, and constantly working through problems that were difficult can be deemed one of the best decisions I have made. Although my final grade may not have been an
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.
I realize that there have been many things that have influenced my growth as an individual. However, because I am so often drawn to ideas in math and science, I’d have to conclude that these two fields of study pose the most compelling as far as personal development. My interest in these fields have impacted who I am today. As a younger student I did not really care much about school. In fact, my second grade teacher pronounced me a failure, but my parents believed in my strengths, and gradually school turned a corner for me. By the end of my sophomore year I had begun watching lectures of theoretical physics, and deep space astronomy from the World Science Festival. I went into my Junior year very ambitious and self motivated! My cumulative GPA within
A. Explain how you were able to use your existing knowledge and competencies from many subjects to succeed in your task.
As an adolescent I had many birth issues and illnesses including asthma. These issues had kept me out of school, giving me less time to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math. Because my mother coached varsity volleyball at Novi High School, most of my childhood was spent in the gym. My father did not always have the best grades, in fact high school was the same for both of us; however, as he continued to college he had increased his study habits and earned himself over a 3.0 GPA. My two sisters are both really school smart, and then there was me, the one who struggled with school. In my Junior year my father got sick and I was on constant worry about my family and how he was doing. School became harder for me to focus on because of this issue and none of my teachers helped me out with the number of assignments. Family was always first with us, then it was education and school, and continued off with friends and fun such as sports.
Learning multiplication is all repetition, something I had never learned the value in yet. By never studying my multiplication tables, I starved myself of acceleration in mathematics. I became severely far behind my peers in the understanding of the subject at hand and the coursework to follow. My discussion with 8-year-old Taylor would ensure that I knew just how essential math would be. Not only would tackling this problem help me excel in school and real life, it would have taught me the value of learning how to learn. Learning how to learn isn't necessarily comprehending the material, but the process in which one learns, ex. outlines, flashcards. Though now I am able to recognize how paramount learning these skills was to a child, my
When I was little, I was always good at math, before 8th grade, when I was in Germany and I came to America. But that changed when I faced the most difficult challenge yet Honors Geometry. Shy 8th grade me was too embarrassed and reluctant to ask my teacher for their help in math and it led to some very big consequences. Because I didn’t try to ask for help, I didn’t do as good as I could’ve and I didn’t reach my academic goal of getting the Golden Tassel.
In elementary school, one of the only mathematic memories from elementary school was unfortunately, was one that I have tried to get over. I will never forget the “minute math” worksheets that were given to us every Wednesday. Those minute math sheets consisted of 50 math problems. (These were normally multiplication.) To this day, I dread doing any multiplication because it just reminds me of those worksheets. To me, they never helped me. What helped me were the rhymes or the finger tricks for the multiples of nine. To this day, I still do those tricks occasionally! In elementary school, I was never strong at math. I believe I always struggled with math because the classes always came off as boring. However, as soon as I hit sixth grade, things started to click.
As I have said previously, I struggled with math from an early age. I continued to struggle with Pre-Calculus. Knowing this, I attended the help sessions each day that they were offered. This required a lot of self discipline and persistence on my part. I was active in several extracurricular activities and I also held a part time job my junior year. So I had to juggle many things in my life to be successful in this
Ever since that moment, I had begun taking more difficult classes, especially in medical sciences and mathematics. I would take extra dual-credit classes after school in the medical field of learning, and as I did, I watched my class rank climb to the highest, and I now stand in the top 1% of my class. I have always worked the hardest to maintain my grades; I have never gotten anything lower
So freshman algebra rolled around and I loved it. After two weeks in the class I was three and one half chapters ahead of the teacher. He would only assign the odd problems for homework, but I’d do them all. Geometry was even cooler. But thinking back, not one of the teachers even commended me for doing so well. My father noticed I was good at it, but I thought he had to tell me I was good; he was my father.
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.
I worked diligently to understand the lessons I was learning but no amount of studying assisted in meeting the benchmarks that were required. I was behind in math and I struggled to get through it each day. I would stress about the concepts to the point of tears. This anxiety and lack of knowledge carried over into the beginning of middle school. I was hopeless at that point. With the help of my parents, I had attempted nearly everything just to keep up. Online studying, tutoring, extra homework, but it all seemed useless.
In junior High School, things started to turn around for me. Although I was still placed in lower level classes, I developed a love for learning. In the years to come from Junior High to High School, I had a strong urge to make up for lost time. One class I started to excel in was the one I used to have the most trouble with, Mathematics. It seemed as though the once boring and complex equations now seemed meaningful and simple. As I progressed into 8th grade, I was able to advance to normal classes. I felt that the hard work I put in was finally paying of. At this point, I felt that I could handle a higher level. At the end of 8th grade, I took the necessary procedures and tests to try and get into honor - level courses in 9th grade. After taking a summer course of Algebra 1 and several tests I was able to succeed and take the classes. The experience was great. I felt that I was finally going the right direction