By: Tyler Dawson, former student

Math in today’s society is often seen as a boring class and not something students look forward to. I believe the sigma around math needs to change because it is one of the most important classes you could take and going into it with a negative mindset could lead to many negative repercussions. If you go into math with a negative attitude it is going to be much harder to learn effectively and that is when math starts to become challenging. I have always gone into math with a positive, learning mindset and that has done me well throughout the many years of me taking math. I am now going into university for a mathematical science program that I feel I would not have been able to get into if I went into math with a negative mindset from a young age. Math is a subject very dependent on information learned in previous grades and this is why if you go into math with a bad mindset at a young age it could be very troublesome for the rest of your mathematical life.

Math is arguably the most important class you take throughout school because being great at math is a good way to get an amazing job out of university. Being great at math can lead to jobs such as a data scientist, an engineer, a statistician, or actuarial scientist. All those jobs I listed are highly math based and are all amazing and high paying jobs. Another reason why math is very important is because you use it all the time in regular day to day life. Continuing, math is a class that universities care a lot about so getting a good mark in math can help you get into great universities or programs even if your program is not math centric.

Another thing most people don’t know about math is that it is actually a fun class if you know what is going on and when you solve a challenging problem or a problem you are stuck on it feels amazing. Math becomes hard and stressful when you start to fall behind or can’t keep up with the lessons. Everything I just stated is why it is so important to get into math at a young age and that starts by going into class with a positive mindset. Math is a subject that a lot of people don’t like because it is too hard but often times that stems from not learning all the previous information that you need to know. This is why it is so imported to learn and understand the concepts taught at earlier ages.

Throughout school math has always been one of my best subjects and I usually have a solid understanding of what is going on. My worst math class in all of school was in grade 11 Functions. Throughout the first half of the semester I was doing well but then I got a bad flu and missed almost 2 weeks of class. This obviously put me behind and for the rest of the semester I struggled catching up because in math it is so challenging to catch up once you’re behind. This shows how meticulous math is, once your behind it is very hard to catch up.

Although this is very different from going into math with a negative mindset, it shows a similar pattern; if you just float through math at younger ages and don’t actually try to understand the concepts being taught eventually, once the classes get harder you are going to struggle without a solid understanding of the those earlier concepts. In conclusion, math class isn’t easy but it is a lot easier if you go into it with a solid, learning mentality from day one.