Assignment 6- Clifton Grady

      In fifth grade, my world was changed forever. Splitting us into different groups to study different topics which he deduced the groups of us he had created we would be interested in, my teacher exposed me to something that changed my life- algebra. Most students hated math, but one others students and I had a profound love and understanding of the subject. Arithmetic, fractions, multiplication and division, probability, I could do it all. I was great with number- which is why I was astonished to see a math problem in which I was solving for…x. “What is this,” I initially thought to myself. Math was supposed to be about numbers, not letters. I was admittedly a bit confused at first, but after a failed attempt or two, my teacher sat down with us and began explaining how we were to go about solving these problems. It was like a puzzle. We had to work out the problems to move “x” to one side of the equation and the mathematical expression to the other side. Easy enough, right? The problems began getting increasingly harder and I almost obsessively began researching this “algebra” on my own. My brain was working in a way it never had before. It was amazing. I was instantly in love, and I never looked back. Mathematics has by far been my favorite subject ever since.