Vinland Elementary School: A Short Story

It’s a warm sunny day in Vinland elementary school. The sun has made a rare appearance and is lazily creeping through the window, painting the normally grey walls a calming yellow. All the students are sitting at their desk drawing the rows and columns of sheep. Except one little girl. Her appearance matches her Norwegian town with her blond hair and light-colored eyes. She has been sitting at her desk explaining to her answer to her teacher. She did her math using her number and drew her sheep but for explanation all she wrote was “I used my brain.” She doesn’t know why she drew the sheep and writing the she multiplied 3x4 just seems redundant since that’s what the question asked her to do. The teacher wants her to write about how she used

the sheep to count how many 3x4 would be but fails to understand that she never used the sheep. Unfortunately, the teacher seems unable to communicate what she wants the girl to write and girl’s Scandinavian heritage has given her a bit of a stubborn streak. The girls already poor writing ability eventually leads the teacher give up and claim that the girl is just stupid. The teacher start giving the girl special worksheets and slowly these sheets pull the girl farther and farther behind her classmates. The school eventually tells her parents that they should allow their daughter to enter a special program for people of similar mental ability. The girl is lucky that same stubborn streak that got her into trouble came from her parents, who fought and clawed until eventually the school allowed for her to be tested. That test proved she was intelligent and deserved her spot in her class.
Those years of being held back taught me something. It taught me how to struggle and how to fight for where I should be. It taught me things are not given to you and that you must fight for them and when I eventually was allowed to work on math at my own grade level I didn’t have the skills I needed to complete those problems. I learned how to struggle and work through problems that I wasn’t equipped to understand, how develop specific skill while working on much larger problem, and most importantly I learned to love the way I feel while I struggle through a problem. Eventually I would learn the more amazing feeling when I finally understand. Even after being held back by my teachers for years I would come back get ahead in math by a year and get into one of the top public universities in the country. So I ask you not to view my faulty GPA as proof that I am not fit to join your department but as proof that I’m willing to work and struggle at the today so I can understand the current understandable tomorrow. Because the future of mathematics is not dependent on how well mathematicians can solve problems of yesterday it is dependent on how well they can solve the problems of tomorrow.