My High School Journey With Calculus by Alexa

My High School Journey With Calculus by Alexa - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

In my early high school years, I didn’t give math a solid thought. Sure, it was a subject I was required to take, but I didn’t challenge myself to fully explore what it had to offer. So, in 9th grade, I decided to take C.A.T. which stands for college algebra and trigonometry. The class was harder than the usual math classes I took each year because I essentially completed a college math class in one semester, rather than in two. I used the program Aleks to take lessons and started to enjoy the rhythmic and logical ways of math to get a satisfying answer at the end.

In 10th and 11th grade, I pursued the hardest math classes my school had to offer for my grade to further my interest in math. I took AP Calculus AB and AP Calculus BC which were definitely more difficult than C.A.T., but also really fun. My classmates and I struggled to grasp the new world of limits, derivatives, integrals, and summations but I feel like the classes unlocked a way of approaching problems that I wouldn’t have gained if I hadn’t taken those classes. It’s so important trying different methods to solve a problem, sometimes using multiple at once, and to visualize what’s happening, else you can get lost in all of the details. I remember I spent every free period every day working on Calculus homework so I wouldn’t fall behind, even though it’d take at least an hour using up two sheets of scratch paper. Sometimes, I’d be so frustrated and have to ask my dad for help, even though he works well into the evening, so I’d feel guilty for taking up his limited free time before it’s a new day. However, asking for help is just another necessity for Calculus, as it’s much more manageable to tackle problems with others. As May came around 10th and 11th grade, I passed my AP Calculus exams with the highest scores. I felt so accomplished and proud.

For 12th grade, I decided to take math to the next level. I signed up for Calculus 3 at my local university my first semester. I took the class with five friends, and I can confidently say it was the most challenging class I have ever taken throughout my high school career. Somehow, it was only a three credit class, but personally, it felt way more than that. We would stay up until 12am working on problems together weekly, meet for a study session before every exam, and spend hours taking notes. If we had some free time during our other classes, we’d all convene to finish a few problems, or sometimes only one, together.
Amidst all of the challenges we knew (and sometimes didn’t know) would come our way while managing our high school classes with the workload of Calculus 3 and the skills built from AP Calculus AB and BC, we all proudly passed the class with an A! We definitely learned the importance of time management, thinking creatively, and the value of return on investment from that class.