When you’re going to school, it’s all too easy to dedicate an enormous amount of time to your studies. This is particularly true if you are in a difficult program and want to get the best marks possible. When you have your mind set on getting a certain average, it doesn’t always seem that unreasonable to push other things in your life aside in order to achieve that goal. I know this because I am in a constant struggle to stop myself from doing that, and I can see the effect it has on others that I know.

I have to be honest: I’ve often not taken other disciplines seriously because I’ve always seen physics as the “purest” science there is. That means I would disregard biology, chemistry, geology, and social science, as well as the arts and humanities at large. I think the two other fields which I did have a certain affinity too was mathematics and computer science, since they were about rigorous logic. Other than that, I found the other fields mildly interesting at best, but never something to take too seriously.

When we learn new concepts in class, I think we tend to focus on what we’re taught, confining ourselves to the scenarios that were introduced in class. To be fair, that’s not a bad strategy, since most professors are only going to test the material that was explicitly seen in class. As such, there’s an implicit sort of agreement that students are not going to see any “surprises” on the test (not the euphemism).

It’s not exactly a secret that I don’t like how mathematics is done in secondary four and five. I feel like the mathematics course for those not pursuing a career in STEM isn’t exactly the best use of a student’s time, because the curriculum doesn’t give students the full picture.