My name is Isabella Duncan and in June I took both the CIM and additional mathematics IGCSE exam. I associate mathematics with a challenge but also with some satisfaction. There are very few feelings that compare to struggling with a question for a long period of time and then finally being able to figure out how to solve it. I am excited to start this course as I found the additional mathematics course in IGCSE very challenging and I hope in this course I will be able to better understand some of the similar topics that I previously could not fully grasp.
One the scale of how I would like to learn mathematics I find myself somewhere in the middle. I think of myself as an independent person so I enjoy working things out by myself. I also value the satisfaction that comes from solving a problem on my own and I find that I will remember something better if I can figure it out myself. At the same time I recognise that it is pointless to struggle by myself if I am unable to solve something or don’t yet have the skills or knowledge to solve it and it would be more beneficial to have someone explain it to me. Sometimes I do need help and I am not ashamed to admit that.
When I am stuck it usually means I have tried every method I know to solve something. In this case I would usually ask for help. Sometimes this is just as simple as asking the person next to me if they have any ideas and sometimes that that is enough to get me going. Other times I ask my teacher for an explanation which mostly solves my problems. I also prefer to do another similar problem after I have solved the previous one to ensure I properly understand the concepts.
I think a strength I have in math is that I am persistent. I don’t like giving up on a question that I haven’t either understood or managed to solve. This means I am able to figure answers out to questions that I may have otherwise decided were not worth trying. Something I need to work on would be being more imaginative when solving problems. I tend to enjoy following set steps and formulas to solve problems and sometimes find it difficult to think outside the box which is sometimes necessary to find an answer.
