Failure with an Open Mind by Lena

Failure with an Open Mind by Lena - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

Little kids know what they are good at, they know when they succeed, they are happy but when they fail, are devastated. They realize they learn more about themselves from things they thrive on. If they succeed, they become confident and grow and prosper. if they fail, they don't believe they grow. Why would you learn anything from something negative? Mistakes are typically pointed as negative aspects of education. If you don’t grow from a success you fall from a mistake, learning and failing don’t mix.

At least, this is what I originally believed.

This is not a story about all my academic successes.
This is a story about making mistakes in a hard subject in order to grow and make your own driven success, for me? That was math and all the mistakes that came with it.

Let me give you a little back story into my relationship with mathematics. When I was little I was stubborn. I hated math so much I did everything I could to avoid learning it. From deciding to become a farmer and working in the garden with a Laura Ingalls Wilder outfit on, to spending copious amounts of time reading Harry Potter books in my room in order to avoid doing my math homework. It seemed as though I would never take up the challenge to even attempt to do math, let alone succeed at it.

Then high school arrived.

I walked in on the first day dragging my feet into the dreaded math class room 13. I had been bemoaning it all day. The cheery colors and the painted numbers and posters decorating the orange and purple walls made me sick. I had no intention of changing my old opinion of myself, I was bad at math and that was that. But after the first day, my opinion had already begun to change. My teacher Ms.Reiss taught me that math wasn't as bad as I thought, if I opened my mind to the idea and put in a lot of hard work in order to understand it. I realized through the year what persistence was, and how much determination I had within me to succeed. Success and math were never spoken together before, but she honestly believed it. She herself had a unique way of thinking. I never saw anyone before who had a genuine passion for the subject, or who really loved teaching math as much as she did. This inspired me to not be so afraid and to latch onto that enthusiasm. This first freshman year of algebra paved a new way for me to experience success to a subject I ended up never hating again despite passing with a C+.

Two years later it was junior year. I had algebra once again, this time algebra 2. Something was different as I sauntered into the familiar classroom. I had a new level of confidence. Never in my life had I walked into a math class with a single amount. But I wasn't little anymore. I wasn't hiding, I was ready. Little did I know that algebra 2 would be the ultimate turning point of forming my already established confidence and challenging my mindset of making mistakes.

I sat in the front of the room on the first day and already I was having doubts. Ms.Helft was unlike any other teacher I had ever experienced. She was fast, exuberant, and overwhelming. The subject itself was harder. There were more steps, more concepts, I felt like I was drowning. But as the year went on, I had to do something about my mindset. I failed every single test and quiz she gave out. Mistakes covered my paper and I always felt defeated. I came to her one day and described this issue. Her response changed my perception about myself and math for the rest of the year. “Mistakes are good they help you, make more of them!" she said with an enthusiastic smile. I thought she was crazy. I had always beaten myself up for failing or making a mistake. How could I ever change my thinking in that regard... and how could anyone think about mistakes like that? Well, she knew what she was talking about. Through the rest of the year, I began to be more positive about the mistakes I made in math class. We connected them and found patterns, which helped me improve. The work itself grew my can do attitude about a subject that I had always been shaky in and improved my experience. My opinion of her and myself changed as well, she wasn't "fast" and "overwhelming" as I originally thought, no more than I was "stupid" or "hopeless" She was brilliant and positive and I was positive and hopeful. I was finally having small successes in the hardest math class I had ever taken.

Through this experience I have gained more than just a passing grade in mathematics. I have taken away important lessons and morphed my original thinking from a stubborn student who decided she couldn’t learn from math nor learn from her mistakes, to an open-minded student who has more self-confidence, positivity, drive and persistence from a subject that she originally believed to never improve in.