Featured article by Hannah Hunt, Shanksville Senior. 

Bill Cosby once stated, “Calculus is one course you can come to your parents and say ‘I am dropping it’ and they’ll understand.” Although he was only joking, that statement demonstrates the difficulty and challenge of calculus. Ever since I was little, I’d always challenge myself to the best of my abilities. So, my senior year, I decided to take calculus despite all the horrible regret stories that the majority of former seniors had when they took the course.

       I’ve always loved mathematics, mostly because of the challenge, but also because of the amount of mental logic that is necessary. In calculus, the problems are often difficult; however, I know I can do anything if I set my mind to it. There are many nights where I study for hours to figure out how to do the problems, but it doesn’t bother me since I find it interesting to solve the problems. It helps that I’m fascinated by numbers and the way they work and that I have a teacher who will go out of his way to help me at any time. Typically, there’s only one right answer in an equation, which means each calculation has to be accurate and precise. When there’s only one right answer, it’s self-rewarding to solve the problem correctly.

        In my years of high school, I’ve noticed that students are either fascinated by numbers or they doze off in math class. However, everything revolves around some kind of math, whether it is simply to tell time or using complex calculus in astrophysics. Honestly, most people out of high school may never need to know the quadratic formula or how to graph tangent lines, but it’s the skills a student obtains in math class, such as problem-solving abilities, that will benefit them throughout their lives.