4 different people who found math difficult during their school days. They all concur that the right guidance brought them around the subject and now they love it. Math is now an integral part in their lives. Read their stories below.
Chandni Shrivastav
Chandni deals with math everyday in her life. As a math curriculum designer, she is involved in making math easier for young children. However, this wasn’t the case when she was a student,
“I used to hate math till I was in the 8th grade or so! Basically my teacher made us do sums very mechanically and I never used to understand them, so I scored quite badly. Then my teacher passed this on to my parents and my days at home became worse.
In my 8th grade I took extra classes and my performance improved. But my parents mapped my scores with those of the highest and they weren’t very satisfied with it. So after that I just dropped math beyond 12th. I took up economics and later on pursued Psychology since I was more interested in that.
In a short while I began teaching math to children and that’s when I began understanding and loving the concepts. The real change happened when I got a wonderful mentor who helped me create content in math, it was mind blowing how easy the concepts actually are.
Now I absolutely LOVE math.”
R Shankara Narayanan
For Shankar, math seemed to be an impossible task till his 9th grade. He felt that he spent a lot of time worrying about unnecessary aspects of his studies instead of spending more energy on understanding the concepts at the time.
“I can be frank, till 9th grade, I used to fail in math. It was my most dreaded subject the main reason being that either my teacher was not communicating the concepts properly or I was just not getting it. In my higher grade though, I found a teacher who guided me. This way, I learnt most of the concepts on my own with the right guidance and soon I began exploring deep into various topics. Post my 10th grade, I developed a habit of solving 2 to 3 puzzles before going to bed and still continue the habit till date. During my days in the engineering college, I developed a passion for numbers and calculation. Then I realized that math was my calling and pursued math as a career too.”
Shankar is usually glued to mathematical formulas at the Cuemath office and has set his heart on helping Cuemath students love math right from the beginning. He confesses that off late, his interest in the concept of cryptography has increased and he delves deep into it.
Sneha Prakash Mudambi
As a child who loved math, Sneha wanted math to be a part of her life always. However, a few years into middle school, she began questioning her choice.
“After my 5th grade, I had a big void when it came to math. How much ever I studied I never understood things properly. I started avoiding the subject and began hating it! I can’t even think of those days.
Later on in life, when I began studying Astrophysics, I started to understand the actual application of various mathematical concepts like Green’s Theorem, area of geometrical figures etc. I understood that without math, I cannot do anything in Physics. I began to like the subject after understanding such applications. Slowly, my like began love and now I am absolutely in love with the intricacies and application of math in everyday life!”
Sneha works as a Math Curriculum Designer today, researching and creating content for easy math learning at Cuemath.
Aishwarya Sinha Ray
Aishwarya a student of Math Honours speaks about her transformation.
“As a junior school kid I didn’t just fear Math, I hated it. The main reason for hating the subject was not being able to relate to any question, be it a word problem or a simple calculation. Because of this, it was very challenging to actually understand anything. Rather than understanding the concept I used to cram the answers and spill it all out in the answer sheets during tests and exams. I even named it BM (Boring Math) until my mother realized it could develop into something serious. So she started giving me real life examples, which helped me answer questions on my own rather than memorizing ‘answer of question number 2 is 35’.
So I fell in love with the subject, I would rather call it a skill and I even ended up graduating in Math
I believe young minds should be given enough exposure to Math because it is a beautiful subject and its beauty is best understood when one lives in it.”