My mathematics experience overall has been a series of ups and downs, with some years being more successful and some aspects being more difficult than others. Something that stands out for me as a staple in the classroom from K-6 was long, double-sided drill sheets. We would be given up to 30 problems on each side of the sheet to solve (with multiplication, subtraction and addition problems) where the speed of calculating answers was not explicitly, but rather implicitly indicated success.
My best memory from mathematics happened in grade four when we learned our multiplication tables through song. I still carry those songs with me to this day (although I still have a little bit of trouble multiplying numbers by 8, I was absent that day). My worst memory would have to be in grade 5 when we were tracking the number of word problems that we completed on a community board. Word problems were something that I wasn't very good at and I was in one of the last places on the chart, which was an embarrassing experience for me. I was pretty neutral on my feelings toward math until that time, and continuous experiences like that in my competitive grade 5 classroom made me believe that I was bad at math until high school. I can't recall how my teachers felt towards the subject of math, but they may have facilitated the "competitive" environment that I always felt math was.
In high school I avoided math like it was the plague. I didn't think that I would be capable of higher-level mathematics and only in my final year did I take the highest level required for entry into university. As it turns out, the class that I so feared was the one where I felt the greatest success and where math became enjoyable. The feeling of mastering a concept in math, when the process makes sense and answers become easier to find no matter how complicated, is very rewarding. I think what made math work for me in that course was how the teacher explained WHY we did the things that we did. This made the processes a lot easier to transfer to all situations. A list of things that you must complete to come to the solution is no good when you come across an unfamiliar or slightly different problem.
Although I had a "math epiphany" I am still nervous about higher-level mathematics. So far in university I have done only the two required courses for this program - Math 1090 and Math 1050. Although I did well in these courses I was scared to challenge myself any further and ruin the good name I had given mathematics in my mind, and therefore did not do any electives.
I don't think I engage with math any more than the average person (calculating the cost of things etc.) and math isn't something that I feel strongly about either way, although I do appreciate its how it helps us to function in everyday situations.
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