I've been passionate about math since I was a kid. One of my earliest memories of math brings me back to a night my dad and I were sitting at the dinner table and I begged him to quiz me on my new addition and subtraction flash cards. I used to love to show him how fast I could do the problems in my head after all the practice I had put in with my Mom. But what was then just a fun activity to me slowly became a deep passion of mine. In elementary school math problems were quick and easy because they mostly contained only simple rules or memorization. As time went on though, math became more complicated and required more work. When I was in high school, I didn't do as well as I should've in algebra considering I had taken it in middle school. And because of this, I questioned how much I really like math, or thought that I shouldn't like something that I wasn't good at. I spent more of high school dreading math until I got to trigonometry. When trigonometry class started in the beginning of the year, I didn't follow directions that were clearly stated in class and seemed to be the only one to do so. When my teacher acknowledged how stupid the mistake was, she asked if I was in the right class which annoyed me deeply seeing that math skills shouldn't be judged on one's ability to follow directions. Regardless, after that week, (and after I made sure I was in the right class) I felt a challenge to prove myself to the teacher. I started studying for that class more than I had for previous math classes and consistently scored within the top of the class on each test. Doing this made me realize that my math grades weren't based on innate talent, but work ethic. As a kid, I was only good at doing the math flashcards because of how much I practiced them with my mom, and the same principle applied in high school. That class made me realize that being good at math is a decision, and one I wanted to make.
Fast forward to present time and I am currently an Industrial Engineering major at Purdue University. It's a major that's very math intensive which is the reason I chose it. I enjoy solving complicated problems, and math has always been the best subject for me to do that in. Throughout my time at Purdue, I've even been approached by friends on multiple occasions to help them learn concepts taught in class. My understanding of math and ability to explain concepts to people makes me a great teacher for them to come to when they have difficulty understanding certain things. The short and informal tutoring sessions I've conducted throughout my time at Purdue have made me want to become a tutor so that I can continue to help people understand topics in math and many other subjects. My goal is to teach others that good grades and test scores are achieved with hard work, not talent.