ENDA Episode 118→ The time when ENDA tried to run away from Math (Part 3)
Nightmarish? Absolutely. We didn’t choose this; it was mandated. Yet the payoff was undeniable.
In a previous episode, I hinted that my secret weapon against the surprise of college-level math in the Communications faculty was an intense pre-college training program. Now it’s time for the backstory…
From mid-second year of high school until halfway through the third (yes, even summer!), my school required us to attend three-hour, four-days-a-week sessions in four subjects: Arithmetic, Geometry, Logical Reasoning, and Physics.
All taught by university-level professors using actual college entrance exam problems. Those sessions turned high-school math into warm-ups for real exams...
Nightmarish? Absolutely. We didn’t choose this; it was mandated. Yet the payoff was undeniable.
When first-year Communications courses threw college-level math basics at my classmates: proofs, equations, and logical puzzles, they struggled. On the other side, I sailed right through. Half of it was déjà-vu from the training program and the rest I unraveled by leaning on the fundamentals I’d rehearsed so many times. Although that did not stopped me to struggle with some concepts and not getting full scores.
Oddly enough, this pre-college program misery sparked my first college friendships: I became “that guy” who ended up helping with Math homework. Isn’t that ironic? I enrolled to escape numbers, and wound up somehow as a math tutor.
But just when I thought I’d tamed every equation, year two arrived, and math came back in forms I’d never anticipated.
But that… is a story for another episode.
The journey continues…
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