B.O.B.

            Honestly, I went into this class not knowing much about graphs.  Somehow, I had managed to go through years of math classes without actually trying to understand graphs, and why they work the way they do.  Instead, I relied on memory.  I memorized how graphs for certain functions look, and when that failed, I used my calculator.  Then I walked into Pre-Calculus, and both of these methods became terribly useless to me.  I used to think knowing a lot about graphs wasn't that important, but once we started working on the packets for this class, my mindset changed completely.  Without knowing what the graph looked like, I found it difficult to understand the function in general.  On the first quiz, I didn’t know how to actually think about the functions to determine their domains and ranges, and instead I tried to rely on my memory to recreate our note sheet on domain and range.  And memory is great, I suppose.  Except when I think I remember something, and I don’t.  As days continued, I found that not only had I actually started to logically think about what the domain of a function would be and why, but I had also started drawing graphs on some of my assignments: graphs from my own mind, not my calculator. 

            My initial reaction was to worry when I saw that we weren’t allowed to use calculators on the test.  What am I supposed to do?  I knew that it had been a while since I had used my calculator to look at a graph.  I knew that it had been weeks since I had used the table on my calculator to hopelessly search for the vertex or the domain.  Yet still, I wasn’t quite sure what to do without it.  I didn’t need it.  But over the years, it has been there to comfort me.  When I doubted myself in the past, I always checked my calculator.  As I looked back, though, on all of the complicated problems that I had solved on my own, and also all of the ones that I had failed to solve correctly at first, I realized that I had come a long way.  Everyone is going to make mistakes at some point.  But there comes a time when we have to realize that what we have been using to hold us up could actually be tearing us down.  No, my calculator was not destroying me.  It is still very necessary for many problems, and will continue to be.  Throughout this unit, though, I realized that I can’t always rely on my memory or my calculator.  I know that I’m going to mess up, and I’ve accepted that.  But I’m not going to stop trying to understand.  I’m not going to give up.  If anything, this unit has taught me that it’s all worth it: the stress, the seemingly endless homework, the lack of sleep.  It’s not just about the grade.  It’s about understanding and learning and trying even when nothing really seems to make sense. 

It’s about understanding the function without a calculator: learning to let go of all the anchors that hold you down, and swimming through all of the currents that keep you from moving forward. 

- Paige