A time I failed

Aleksa Bokovi

At the beginning of my second year of high school my class had gotten a new professor to
teach us Algebra and Analysis, as well as Trigonometry. He is known to be a very good
professor and an excellent mathematician, but also the one to always demand nothing but the
best that we, as students, can do. His classes were challenging and often difficult to follow,
but were designed to help as improve our logic and reasoning, and our problem solving skills.
Late that October we had our first exam in Trigonometry. We had covered a lot of ground,
including various new methods of proving identities and theorems. The book the course
followed was written in great detail and had a lot of extra problems for students to work on
themselves. By the time our class was supposed to take the exam, most of us had already
done a good part of the extra problems. We were as prepared as we could possibly be,
considering that we knew nothing about the way his tests looked and how he graded them.
I walked out of the classroom confident that I had done well. So, when the results came, I
was quite shocked to find that only five points separated me from failing. I was shattered.
Despite all the time I spent studying and working, something went wrong. I didnt do my best
on that exam. I had no idea why. But at that point that wasnt important. What was important
was that I failed, not only on the exam, but in my eyes and in the eyes of my professor. I was
only interested in seeing what I could do to improve my professors and my own opinion of
my skills. The next few weeks I spent thinking about what could be tweaked in my work
regime. I started following classes more carefully and spending more time solving problems
and exploring various topics and fields in mathematics. That was the moment that I realised
exactly how much I love math and that one day I wish to pursue it as a career.
When the time came for the next exam, I was even more confident than the last time. I had a
chance to take a look at my previous exam, and it was evident that during that exam I was not
concentrating on the problems that were in front of me, but rather wondering of, often while
at the very beginning of the solution. Once I realised that, the second exam was off to a good
start. I managed to get, much to everyones surprise, the highest mark possible. It felt good
knowing that I have redeemed myself in the eyes of the professor whom I now consider to be
the best math teacher I ever had, and also to see certain flaws disappear and turn into habits
of good, hard work that, today, I try to apply to everything I do.

References
Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A.
(2010, May 5). General format.
Retrieved from: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/