Be Curious to Learn More

As a child we learn rapidly because everything is new to us and we are curious as to how it all works, right? We repeat the same things over and over to see if we get the same results and it helps us learn and remember. We do all this naturally as a child but somehow for many students that natural curiosity is buried. It may not have been a student's idea to learn factoring, trigonometric identities, or the surface area of a cone so there is a subtle resistance that slows down or may even inhibit the learning process. Try for a moment to 'pretend' that it actually was your idea and 'become' curious as to why math works the way it does. How can one do this? See what happens if you change one of the numbers in the problem. How does that alter the result? How about changing that positive to a negative? What does that do? How about working the problem backwards from the end to the beginning. If you are factoring follow that up by foiling. Check your results by substituting them back in. Why does it make the equation true? In conclusion, try to be more curious. Explore this transitive property(law of syllogism): if you are more curious then math becomes more interesting, if math becomes more interesting then you have more fun doing math, if you have more fun doing math, then math becomes easier, if math becomes easier, your math grade becomes higher, if your math grade becomes higher then your self confidence will grow, if your self confidence grows then you will realize that you have untapped potential, if you realize you have untapped potential then you will realize that you are on your way to accomplishing your goals and will enjoy doing so because your curiosity has made you aware of how interesting life is. Wow! It might even be true but I only guarantee up to the increased math score : ) Please let me know of your experiences and results if you try this process.