Page 50 - Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pragati Vihar, New Delhi - E-Patrika

Maths versus Bhavya Pandey

“….And it is precisely the 14th sheet of paper I am tearing with all the frustration
and anger that possibly could reside deep down inside me. While turning the pages
randomly, All I can witness are cuts, cross , scribbled pens , mostly red ,apparently
all signs indicating one thing-WRONG. Tears are rolling down my eyes as I am
asking myself again and again-what’s gonna happen tomorrow? The notebook has
written on its cover in bold letters :
The above written lines are taken from my very personal diary , a night before my
maths summative assessment .Each one of has someone we hate or consider to be
our enemy, right ? I probably might be the only person whose “enemy” is virtual,
non living and actually immortal .That night right before the exams, trust me, I

couldn’t sleep even for half a minute.
Obviously, the exams was horrible and why it wouldn’t be ? I was scared, unsure,
exhausted, unprepared, under confident and most of all unwilling , all factors that
constitute a guaranteed failure .I saw my classmates discussing about how lenient
the teacher was as the paper was so easy and all of a sudden started to feel as if I
was surrounded by 45 Ramanujans . I was sure that I was going to score bad but it
wasn’t the marks that bothered me, they never have actually but , the fact that I
was unable to identify why I always underperformed in my maths exam. Ever since

childhood, I always found easy to deal with letters than to deal with numbers as
letters spoke to me while the numbers , they were dumb I guess. Scientists say that
doing something for 26 days regularly makes one use to it and here I was, studying
maths for past 10 years, wondering if my hatred towards maths was so strong and
intense that it dismissed proved science theories.
Not all my experiences are bad with regard to maths. I remember a few classes when
I had started to believe that it isn’t that bad and hard .One such amazing chapter I
remember was construction in which I always received remarks like neat work and
those stars that were quite encouraging but the scary thought of numerous
equations and tiring calculations waiting to be solved in the very next chapters

forced me to stick on my evergreen belief-LET IT BE, THAT’S NOTFOR ME and the
funny part was even here I discarded actual problem solving , preferring modified
and methodical drawing using instruments .
The day my result was out, everyone was happy with my performance . After all 9.4
is considered to be a very appreciable score. Some were perhaps expecting a better
turn out because its odd to see a girl scoring 10 in all except maths as it was not
what they say :perfect . but what was worse is I myself was thinking had I paid
more attention to maths, I could have scored a 10 .I hate only three things in this

entire world-milk , smokers and regrets .Now I had realized one thing very clearly
– I did not hate maths , instead I was unwilling to accept the fact that I was weak
at something and ran away from the reality that reflected my disparities .
I wanted things very easily and quickly and never focused on understanding , rather
preferred reading and learning maths. I took maths as a subject that was