I'm having a hard time choosing the topic of my first essay, but here's both. They're both unfinished.
FIRST: I furiously stared down at a blank sheet of paper as my third grade teacher called "time". This was my third time taking this multiplication test and I still haven't improved. I couldn't help but build up the fears of failing and never being good enough. How could I be so bad at math while all my peers could figure out six times seven within an instance.
It wasn't until I was in the first week of middle school that I realized I couldn't sulk around in my failure. It was my math teacher who taught me that failure wasn't an option and being the best was attainable. I had to excel in math, whether or not I liked it. I spent every after school, every school night, studying the basics of algebra. After weeks and weeks of hard work, I learned that it wasn't that hard to work hard enough to get what I wanted. It was my first B in math that made me realize I can aim even higher.
Yes, I ended up being the "grade rubber" of my class, but I didn't care. I wanted to excel not for school, but for myself. I wanted to be the one who got an A on her first math test. Although I did not get an A in all my years of middle school, I didn't stop there. I wanted to keep advancing in math.
I had a love and hate relationship with this subject. There would be times where I would get my math problems so quickly and I thought It was going to get easier from there. Oh boy was I wrong. It started after I had Aced geometry in the tenth grade that I realized it wouldn't be so hard to take an accelerated course of trigonometry over the summer. Six week, two hours a day, and five days a week of pure math seemed like the greatest way to test my newfound skills. Then came the actual lessons of trigonometry. My math teacher had a sense of passion for math. He somehow related math to life. He told us if we ever wanted to get anywhere in life, mathematics was it. "Work hard, play hard" he use to say.
I could definitely say that math has engulfed most of my life. I lived through math problems and loved to be right.
SECOND: Privet, kumusta, and finally hello! Russian, Filipino, and English were the very first languages I learned as a child. Mantels decorated with matroyshkas (Russian dolls), the smell of adobo (a Filipino dish) filled the air, and the voice my sister and I speaking English for the first time was what consumed my home. These three cultures shaped what I come to believe today and I understood the importance of my background.
I learned how my parents waited in breadlines in Russia in the late 1980s which taught me I needed to be grateful with what I'm given today.
Furthermore, coming from a traditional Filipino family, I learned how to be respectful towards the people around me. I learned "Mano po" one of the many signs of respect to my elders.
Being educated in America, I learned to be open about the different cultures my peers surrounded me with. My three best friends and I all came from different ethnical backgrounds.
I wish I could say that I'm the most interesting person because I was blessed with growing up in so many different surroundings. Although I wish I became fluent in Russian, Tagalog, and English; I couldn't even win a spelling bee as a kid. What I really learned, was having a diverse background gave me the opportunity to be open to every opportunity.
Now I can't say that I've taken up every opportunity in my lifetime, like during the summer when my sister ineffectively persuaded me into parasailing with her. What I really did was I took the opportunities where I could challenge myself, physically and mentally. Physically, I took the initiative to take swim conditioning as a sophomore and become, on record, the last person, every single time to finish her laps. Mentally, I throughout all of school, math had always been my weakest subject and yet I continued to struggle through hours of tutoring to finally take Calculus this year.
By being able to take the opportunities in front of me to my advantage, I've fully understood where I want to be in the next few years. I feel as an engineer major, I'd be able to challenge myself even more so mentally than I can even imagine. I don't think these aspirations of mine have been because of my passion of math right now. It was because of the help of everything around me. I learned to take apart the matroyshka dolls and curiously put it back together. With the help of my father, I was fiddled with every electronic device in my home.
