Thursday 22 January 2015

Maths and me

Maths was never my favourite subject in school. I used to struggle in school to cope up . I used to memorise the procedure to solve the problems.  I lacked conceptual understanding. I was unable to connect maths to my day to day life.
When I started Home Schooling, I did maths through NCRT books, the book brought some fun in maths. When I did maths along with my dad, maths started making more sense to me.

Overall my beliefs on maths is
Maths is Tough.
I not mathematically intelligent
I am terrible at maths.
These beliefs result in me having low confidence in maths.
I get scared and blocked up when a maths problem is thrown on me.
Due to hatred towards maths, I do not work much on maths, I try to avoid doing maths.

Now I have started doing maths everyday for one hour. I take up a topic, read about it in textbook, do practice sums, connect to real life. I ask my peers to check my sums. When I don't understand I take help. Once I feel confident in one topic, I move on to the next topic.
Currently I am working on volume. I connected to real life, by measuring volume of a bowl and glass. also volume of a water tank at my home.

My objective is to get friendly with maths, get confident in maths, learn and practice the basic mathematical concepts i need to know for my day to day life.

Due to doing maths everyday, I am feeling good about myself.
I thank my Mother and Father for pushing me to do maths and supporting me to learn maths.
I am very happy that I am being open to maths now and working on breaking my own beliefs.

Thursday 15 January 2015

Writing skill assessment

If I assess myself on my writing, on the blogs I have written till now. I have come to conclusion that my speed of writing and comprehension is 8/10 but when it comes to writing a lot (more than 1 parahas) I am 4/10. I need to work on style,grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage of vocabulary.

Discipline and problems

I was part of the discipline committee at campus this week . The journey of helping the community in discipline was different for me. I don't know if I was able to help others but I definitely helped myself.

On day 1 I was very excited. I was of the mind set I have to solve all the community's problem. I started solving problems by giving my gyan. I told people what I thought is right.
It had been decided that the committee will operate through ' no images ' and empowering. I did not quite understand that and that's why the first day went down hill.
When I was in the discipline committee I felt responsible and important. I felt nice to contribute to the community.
If x has hit y, I instantly think that what x did was wrong. When I interact with them, My images anout the two people come with me. Before I listen to them i have decided who was wrong and who was right.
If I want to be neutral to x and y, I need to put aside my image of those people. I don't need to scold x for hitting, I don't need to put my personal opinion into it. I can empower y to take care of self.
I am not responsible for anyone problems. It is not my role to solve others problems. It is not even my role to help that person. It is my role to empower that person to be able to solve their own problems. Listening and acknowledging the person is important.
What about me - to solve my problems I can start looking inside me rather than depending on others to help me.
I can start looking at my problems as learning opportunities rather than troubles.
By being in the discipline committee, I have got a new perspective to look at my problems, a new way to support others.