AP Calculus by Laurel

AP Calculus by Laurel - June 2016 Scholarship Essay

One obstacle that I overcame in my high school career was my decision to take AP Calculus, and to retain the information that I had learned. That class made me want to push myself to learn the material, and study the content, instead of just parroting the math that I would quickly forget after the test. In all of my previous math classes, I had settled for the grades that I managed to hold onto with minimal studying, but this year my mindset changed. I realized that to go into the engineering field, I would need to actually know how to do what I learned in Calculus, along with what we had learned in previous years. When I was simply applying the minimal effort needed in my past math classes, I wasn’t doing my future self any favors. I would now have to relearn all of that content, along with the new AP Calculus curriculum. I decided to take the learning into my own hands, and fight for the best grade that I could get.

This change happened because it was the hardest math class that I had ever taken, and my previous year’s efforts wouldn’t be enough to keep up my GPA. Another big contributing factor was my teacher, and how excited and motivated he was about math. He was the one who gave me that initial push in a forward direction, instead of taking a step backward in this critical year. When we entered his classroom it was time to learn and he pushed us to succeed both in his class and the AP test. He also taught us real world applications and gave us harder problems, so when we took the test we would have a full understanding, and then some. My teacher made it his passion to make us passionate about math, so that we would have the understanding and drive to learn and take advantage of every opportunity given to us as students.

From the work that I did in his class, I feel prepared to go to college and use what I learned in a higher level of learning. I have a good foundation of Calculus so that if I took classes like Calculus two or Calculus-based Physics, then I would be prepared and able to keep up. He also gave us a good amount of homework so that we would be ready for the workload at college and not turn in any assignments late. I also had to study for hours on end to do well on his tests. That made me realize by actually studying for math, and doing some extra work, I could boost my grade and confidence – knowing I was solving the problems correctly. Finally he made it so I was comfortable in asking questions and even getting a tutor or study partner, so I didn’t have to figure it all out on my own – which can be intimidating or discouraging. Sometimes a different viewpoint and inspiration is the difference between parrot math and true understanding.