I hated learning during science and math lessons all the way through JC. I rote-learnt my way through everything. A, E, C Math and A-level Chem.
I hated school.
When I scored a spot to study communications at NTU, I finally felt so free and liberated in a school environment. I found my “true calling”. Telling stories with visuals and words became “my thing”.
And that gave me the confidence to finally say what I always felt about my abilities: “I am not a Science and Maths person!”
And…I wore that declaration like a badge of honour.
After that, I had a career as a photojournalist and filmmaker. I didn’t need math and science for most of that.
So, I continued repeating that mantra whenever I met anyone who told me anything remotely science-y or maths-y.
A few years back, I started meddling around with building interactive games. It required me to learn some basic lines of code. That experience opened up my mind to the potential of using technology to tell stories.
I started reading up more and that journey down the rabbit hole ended up with me enrolling myself in a Data Science bootcamp earlier this year.
I learnt very quickly that the machine learning algorithms, every line of python code, map coordinates, everything — were built on top of Math and Science!
Every time a complicated line of mathematical equation appeared on the lecturer’s slides, I would go into panic mode and start searching for any hint of English on the slide, in hope that it would magically explain to me what that equation meant.
I then, realised that a decade of math/science-hating did nothing for me but impeded my ability to learn so many things about the world.
So…throughout the past year of learning new things, the biggest old thing I needed to unlearn was how to stop saying:
“I am not a Science and Maths person!”
Contributed by an anonymous writer
