An Old Joke: When it comes to math, there are three kinds of people. Those who can do math. And those you cannot.
When I signed up for ICS 111, I did it mostly out of boredom. Thankfully, as an employee of the university, I can take classes. Most of the classes I have were out of personal interests like German, Japanese, and music. By taking an ICS class, I hoped that I might learn “something” to make my job a little easier, but majoring in computer science was not even thought.
On the very first day, the professor announced that there was going to be a math test the following week, and I immediately thought about dropping out right then and there. For nearly all my life, I believed that there are “math people” and then there is the rest of us. This self-imposed mental block eventually evolved into a minor case of math phobia, so much so that after high school I did everything I could to avoid math. So, the thought of taking a math test with more than decade between me and my last math class sounded like a sure fire way to embarrass myself.
Thankfully, I curbed that impulse, and as the professor continued his introduction, he told us that the secret to passing his course was to “code every day.” I knew I could do that, so I signed up Khan Academy and the study some remedial math over weekend. While I didn’t ace the math test, I did not fail. Over the course of semester, I had a friend tutor me, and slowly but surely began to conqueror my math phobia. The more code I wrote, the easier it was for me to think about coding and math as matter of practice.
By the end of the semester, I realized that I wanted to major in computer science because: