How Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
When it comes to learning a new skill such as how to drive a car, playing a sport, or an academic discipline, there is a unique relationship between a person’s confidence and their level of competence at different points of the journey. A popular depiction of this relationship is the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the cognitive bias that leads you or me to overestimate our abilities too early on the learning journey.
There are five stages of the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
- Knowing nothing
- Mount Stupid
- The Valley of Despair
- Slope of Enlightenment
- Plateau of Sustainability.
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Stage one: Knowing nothing
At the beginning of this stage you have no prerequisite knowledge on the area of study or skill. When you begin learning, the initial progress seems fast and smooth. While building fundamental knowledge and experiencing early meetings with success, you grow confident in your abilities.
As a child, I had a growing curiosity for numbers, making math the easiest subject for me to keep up with in school. I was highly confident in my ability to solve math problems and it felt great.
My earliest memory of loving math comes from a 1st-grade classroom game. The class was divided into two groups, each standing on opposite sides of the room. We then formed two lines facing each other in the center, where our teacher stood with a stack of flashcards.
She would call up the two students at the front of each line and read out a math problem. The first to answer correctly moved to the back of the line, while the other sat down, eliminated. This continued until only two students remained, and the winner of their final matchup was crowned the class champion.
I won the first time we played this game - then the second, third and fourth time. At barely six years old, felt extremely excited about math, and quickly fell in love with the subject. It was fun and easy!
Stage two: Mount Stupid
As you get closer and closer to the peak of this stage, your confidence in your abilities turns into arrogance, thinking you know much more than you do. At this point, many people feel that they won’t experience any future difficulties in their learning journey.
I hadn’t realised it then, but up until 13 years old, I found myself grovelling my way up Mount Stupid and by 16, scraped up by setbacks and harsh lessons, I guess I managed to reach the summit.
Before the mount, Math continued feeling fun and easy throughout my early days of school. From dominating classroom math competitions, consistent good grades in elementary school, to getting a 96th percentile score on state standardized tests and qualifying for Algebra as an incoming 8th grader in middle school - Math was easy. It almost felt like I didn’t need to work as hard and over time, I began to steadily develop a sense of overconfidence, if not outright arrogance in my skills.
Since it took me little to no effort to learn math concepts, I started to get complacent. I stopped double checking all my answers on worksheets, quizzes, and tests. I was always able to bounce back and finish with high grades though, because I’d put in the most effort drilling practice problems for tests. In hindsight, all this did was make me think that my natural ability at math would always outweigh my bad habits.
My teachers had the same script for my parents every time: “Mike is one of the brightest kids in the room, and could be the best, but he distracts himself by talking too much and forgets to double check his work.”
Stage three: The Valley of Despair
This stage is where reality hits hard. In your continued efforts to learn you encounter complexities, exceptions, and deeper layers of difficulty. Failure becomes commonplace and one feels stuck or overwhelmed because you realize how much you don’t know. Confidence has dropped drastically.
When I first got into high school, my math goal was to take calculus as a senior. I didn’t even know what I would do with calculus, but I just wanted to reach that level. The last class I needed was precalculus, which I took as a junior.
Early on into the year, things were comfortably challenging and I made through the first quarter with no problems. But come the second quarter, trigonometry was introduced and I struggled heavily. Geometry already made little sense to me, trigonometry even less so. By the time the first half of the year ended, I wasn’t sure if I could even finish the class with a C when I got a 70 on my midterm exam.
Things only got worse in the third quarter. My bad habits amplified the learning gaps I was failing to close, taking a toll on me. I couldn’t even get through homework problems without wanting to throw my textbook out my bedroom window. I couldn’t grasp it. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t understand anything. Numbers were companions in my world and Math was the language we spoke. Yet for the first time, there was this barrier I couldn’t overcome.
By my 17th birthday, with just two months left in my junior year of high school, I felt the sharp plummet towards the Valley of Despair. Homework assignments bruised my ego with scores of 65 to 75 points. Math quizzes followed suit and right hooked me with Cs and Ds. I failed one major unit test that left me battered before the final exams came around.
My high school math dreams were crushed when I failed my precalculus final exam during the last week of the school year, which meant not making it to calculus as a senior. It was demoralizing. I never in my life thought my worst performance in school would be Math related, but that’s how my junior year ended.
The fall was brutal.
I began to develop a bitterness towards math. I signed up for a statistics class for my senior year, mainly because I didn’t want to take the alternative, which was environmental science.
After the first quarter, I barely put any effort into learning. Since it was my last class of the day, I often drifted through lessons and practiced problems without much focus.
Half the time, I lazily completed my work; the other half, I chatted with classmates, played emulator games on my phone, or took naps. I ended up with a B—more out of my teacher’s pity than my own effort. I told myself I didn’t care about math anymore.
Stage four: The Slope of Enlightenment
Persistence is the key to arriving at stage 4, as the extreme lows of stage push some people to quit. Upon upwards climb from the lows, true competence is developed because you’re equipped with real experience and a structured approach to learning. As knowledge deepens in this stage, confidence rises once more, this time at a steady and realistic pace.
Almost two years into college, my advisor randomly asked me about taking Calculus as an elective. I looked up from my phone surprised. My major wasn’t even in math.
When I asked why he suggested that, he said, “You look like a guy that’s good with numbers.” I gave a short chuckle and said I would think about it. I walked away from that meeting wondering why I gave up in high school. Thoughts of what I could possibly do if I tried again with math periodically popped up in my mind for the next six months.
I finally gave in and spun the pie - I missed how my world felt when I was in the zone solving math problems.
Two years after graduating high school, I attempted to self-teach math from series and tutorials on YouTube, to platforms like Khan Academy. The goal was to review previously learned concepts while introducing new ones but I kept hitting a mental block that I just couldn’t push through.
While I was rebooting my connection with math, I had also finished college a year early. This meant spending lots of time back at home job hunting and doing math problems periodically to distract my mind from the daunting exhaustion of being unemployed.
Being a teacher came with its baggage, but breaking down math concepts to children and helping them overcome their challenges with learning new topics felt very rewarding. Teaching unearthed a fire in me that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The classroom became a world I could understand again, my lesson plans, a language I could craft and my students, companions who motivated me to deliver and inspire. I had found my groove of being great at something again and this time, I had a purpose beyond me. I was in my zone of enlightenment for many years as a teacher and I was really good at it.
However, this comfort zone eventually morphed into internal restlessness. I realized that unless I pushed myself to overcome the failures I experienced a decade ago I would never forgive myself. I decided to attempt another reboot of my connection with math again and in July 2024, I stumbled upon Math Academy while scrolling on X. After reading some tweets of people raving about the site, I decided to sign up.
What is Math Academy?
Math Academy is an online learning platform designed to teach mathematics in a highly efficient and structured way. It uses an AI-powered adaptive learning system that customizes your learning plan to your current skill level.
After you take a diagnostic test for the math course of your choice, the personalized learning path is laid out, showing you unlocked lessons and letting you know what percentage of the course is currently completed. Practicing math becomes very easy, you simply show up to math academy every day in front of your screen and work on the unlocked sub-topics, akin to one walking into a gym and all the exercise equipment is laid out for you, ready to be used.
You’re consistently challenged, but not overwhelmed and the lessons are designed to help students learn in the shortest amount of time possible, making it possible to reach mastery at a quicker rate than traditional school instruction.
I was blown away by how I would spend hours almost every day practicing math. Despite all the bruises and cuts my ego had built up from previous attempts I began my climb out of The Valley of Despair. Problem by problem, lesson by lesson, I took one step at a time from the lows, constantly faced with thoughts of, “What if I failed again?” But the thought, “What if you don’t this time?” pushed me to keep on going.
Stage five: The plateau of sustainability
In this 5th and final stage, you’ve reached an expert level of mastery in your area of study, having now acquired high skills and legitimate confidence. There is an understanding that learning never stops, and because of this, you have enthusiasm to keep on learning, knowing that growth will continue with consistency and stability.
I’m proud to say that From July 2024 till today, I have completed the Integrated Math Honors series (I, II and III) and currently 63 percent complete Mathematical Foundations 3.
Everything I learned in my high school math classes, along with more topics I never got exposure to were taught in IMH II and III. When I finally completed III, I made it across the other side of the tunnel. I finally was capable of learning calculus, and I succeeded in surpassing my previous peak set almost 11 years ago.
I still experience challenges everyday with Mathematical Foundations 3, but that’s par for the course. Learning math as an adult is an entirely different thing than as a kid. After being humbled during my high school years, I’m more patient and structured in my learning. I have a direct pathway towards the success I want to reach.
Today I know that I always had what it took to be great at math, I just didn’t know what prerequisites I was lacking. I have MathAcademy to thank for this enlightenment and my current skill set and ability as evidence.
There will always be waves of uncertainty, but embracing the discomfort with confidence and commitment to win will always pay off in the end. Approach learning with relentless curiosity and practice, until you understand and can move on to the next topic.
As I continue my climb up the slope of enlightenment, I hope my story is your sign to reboot your passion, give it another go, keep trying and never stop learning. Math Academy was my sign - what will yours be?
Here’s to being a preserving student for life.