Precalculus by far was my worst math class — I couldn't apply the methods and formulas. I don't blame the teacher at all; in fact, he was an excellent teacher, but the subject was difficult to understand. I learned but never understood the purpose of the rational root method, finding all the roots of a polynomial, and topics like optimization.
I breezed through trigonometry and elementary algebra, but precalculus seemed like the end of the road for me in terms of my mathematical abilities. Combined with my extreme junior year workload, I was done. After my grades dropped because of precalculus, all confidence in my mathematical abilities asymptoted to the square root of -1.
Somehow I still applied to and got into my school's Calculus BC class, which by itself was an achievement considering how oversubscribed it was. I made an effort to learn the material in advance so that I could avoid any more grade drops. Thankfully, Khan Academy proved to be an excellent resource. I managed to learn about 40% of the material before my school started, due to consistent practice and perseverance (I would have covered more, but the SATs and college applications came in the way). In terms of my grades, that helped me boost my average, considering I got my highest math grades in Calculus BC. I was finally able to ask intelligent questions in class and get a decent head start on the material.
It didn't stop there. My calculus teacher, Mr. Jim Cocoros, was easily the best math teacher I've had at Stuyvesant. His style of teaching was quite unconventional, in which he used funny terminology to describe features of functions. For example, he calls a cusp a pointy, a normal smooth curve a roundy, and a jump discontinuity a Brooklyn pothole. His definitions are quite funny, but they help us better understand the material. Because of his relaxed class pace and genuine desire to teach college math to second term seniors, math became a lot more fun and engaging.
Personally, I'll never forget when he dressed up as Snape for Halloween, showed us an old test with a Lord of the Rings theme, and put on a Zoro costume and brought a fake sword to show us integration by parts. And whenever possible, he engages us with stories from his high school and college days, so we ended up knowing a lot more about him and the experiences he went through to become one of Stuyvesant's most beloved teachers.
I do miss him a lot, and his class really did show me that math could be fun. I ended up acing my AP exam and the placement exam at Stony Brook, and I'm confident that if I put in the effort and self-study before my classes start, I can easily get the same head start that enabled me to better understand the material in the first place. I'm currently using this tactic for my MAT307 class at Stony Brook this fall, and I definitely hope that I can ace it and continue to love math. Thanks, calculus!
