Storytelling In Math: A story of perseverance by Odelia

Storytelling In Math: A story of perseverance by Odelia - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

My calculus class consisted of me staring at the clock anxiously waiting desperately for it to hit 11:15 am so I could leave. I would shrink myself into my chair just enough to not be noticeable but still appear as though I'm engaged, a tactic I used to avoid being called on because I knew I would not know the answer. Not only would I not know the answer, but I was always clueless as to how to even arrive at the answer, and I couldn't bear the embarrassment of publicly struggling.

My relationship with calculus was a rough one; it quite literally disrupted my sense of self. I was always a student who was “good at school”, not in the sense that everything came easy to me, but when I put in effort, I would always reap results, except in calculus. It was at this point that I realized I had subconsciously attached my academic performance to my sense of self-worth. No matter how many hours I put in, the practice tests I did, the time I spent in office hours, it would not click. This negative self-belief that I couldn't succeed in the class crept into every aspect of my learning. I doubted myself, which inhibited my ability to sit and tackle problems. I very quickly learned how to fake an understanding to hide my perpetual confusion, but when it came to my exams, it'd all come crashing down. I would stare at the blank paper of my open-response exam with my eyes glazed over with tears. I was frustrated. After my second midterm, it settled in very quickly; I had to find an alternative way to understand the material being taught to me.

I didn't understand in a purely mathematical sense, so I started to take a more visual approach, comparing functions to landscapes and derivatives to speedometers, making connections that aligned with my understanding of everyday life. It was then that ideas began to weave together into larger, coherent concepts. With this, I also began to recognize patterns and know when to utilize certain tools as opposed to others, a skill that served me well as I took multivariable calculus and advanced statistics. I used my pattern recognition and storytelling methods to synthesize the information I was given on exams. While this meant that I would sometimes take longer to answer problems because I had to translate mathematical problems into stories and then back to math, my answers were more accurate.

Once I created a storyline of how to think of a concept, I started to understand what it was and what formulas to employ. I wasn't just guessing when to take the derivative or memorizing mathematical concepts. Whereas the limit definition of a derivative was once floating around in my memory, now it was attached to a logic that I was able to build on in my advanced statistics and calculus classes. It also made proofs so much easier; I wasn't reading over paragraphs in hopes of memorizing every single proof and its respective steps. The steps became parts that weaved together to create a story that I genuinely understood.

I ended up passing the course with a C; however, I was able to understand that the most important thing was learning and not the number or letter on the exam. Moreover, I became more acquainted with myself in terms of understanding the methods I need to utilize to make math make sense to me, a tactic that served me well through the years. I was then able to do better in my future courses; rather than giving up, I learned to rethink. My ability to think in abstract ways and use my previous failures as guidelines to get me closer to the correct answer genuinely served me so much more than the passing grade.

Beautifully enough, this skill became especially relevant as I am pursuing a degree in digital humanities; now my specialized interest concerns creatively thinking about how to use analytical practices to solve social problems. I learned that understanding did not mean solving the problem the fastest. Sometimes it meant finding the right formula to synthesize a problem in a way unique to you; for me, that meant translating mathematics into narratives. While my time in calculus was far from enjoyable, it's why I found my way to an academic discipline which I feel so passionately about; in a way, my hardship primed me for my future. Now, when I don't understand something, I try to reframe the situation in a simpler format. What started off as a workaround for a very difficult situation became a foundational approach to how I solve problems both academically and in my day-to-day life.