The numbers were talking to me. They spoke of their problems and how I, their savior could solve it for them. To demonstrate their gratitude for saving them they awarded me with the gift of candy and my favorite at the time: an okay grade. But I couldn’t help but feel a tad bit guilty knowing that I was memorizing the material to only receive the prize of some fruity candy and a passing grade.

I’m sitting in the back of the classroom forcing my eyes to focus on the whiteboard. It had one phrase, underlined multiple times in red. The phrase took up the whole board “Don’t hear, LISTEN”. Mr. Munoz, my 6th-grade teacher, repeats the phrase 5 times and makes direct eye contact with each student every time he repeats the phrase. His glare is so intense that most of the students look away. He was a teacher who was passionate about his job and he honestly, at times, didn’t care about our feelings; he preferred the truth. “You must have not been listening or else you wouldn’t be having such a difficult time. Now go ask somebody who was actually listening for some help”. On that same board, he drew an arrow from the word LISTEN and with a red marker wrote “LEARN!”. 

At the time I didn’t know but the way our brain works is by making connections from one neuron to another like the way the “LISTEN” connected to  “LEARN” on that whiteboard.  To learn the material we needed to connect math to the real world through multiple word problems and my teacher made sure to give us a multitude of word problems to solidify the information into our heads. I hated word problems. I just wanted to see the numbers and go. Instead, I had to be an archaeologist and dig around to find the numbers that were valuable. But my problem was that I would get lost in the words “Your brother traveled 117 miles in 2.25 hours...” the numbers are clear to see I'm feeling good about this. ”...to come home for school break...” okay this kid is coming back from somewhere. “...what’s the average speed he was traveling?”. What were the numbers again? 

The more I reexamined the same problem the more I felt myself drowning in the words. Instead of letting my frustration take over, I had to acknowledge that I needed help. I listened and observed as my teacher talked through the problem and how he underlined the numbers in red. I learned then just what technique I could apply to all those word problems waiting for me at my desk. I may have been drowning in confusion but the numbers in the word problem were also drowning. I could save them by drawing a circle around them and slashing out the irrelevant sentences like: “to come home for school break”. Once I established a technique that worked for me I lost time-solving these problems but I didn’t mind because the more difficult the problem the more satisfied I was when I solved them. 

  Word problems made me realize how essential math is in everyday life. I was unmasking everyday objects and realizing HEY math is the one behind this. When looking at the buildings in Chicago, I found myself thinking about all the math that was needed to build them. I saw the planes soaring high in the sky and I wondered just how fast does this plane need to go and for how long in order to take off? I was able to answer those types of questions in my math class.

 Throughout my high school math classes, I would learn the material not just to receive some fruity candy and a passing grade but also because I knew I would be able to apply the concepts in real life. In my future, there will be many days where I will need the numbers to become the savior to my problems.