Illustration by Megan M. Gannett, 13, from her story Swaying in the Breeze, published in our December 2016 issue I jumped out of the car and closed the door behind me. I ran up the sidewalk towards the house where math camp was being held. A few other kids were also arriving then and I followed them into the house. I left my shoes with everyone else’s, by the door, and went inside. I sat down on the carpet where the other kids were sitting and we played a fun game called Sushi Go to start the day. When we were done, one of the kids asked if we could play again, but the teachers said we had to start doing math stuff. We started a new activity which was math-related, a magic trick. You can figure out the trick using math and that was what we were supposed to do. We all sat around trying to think. We had a few guesses but we couldn’t completely figure it out. Then we started working on a problem sheet. We had only been working for five minutes or so when the dog came in. He walked under the table and everyone started petting him and forgot all about the math. Then he walked out and lay down on the side and we went back to math. What do you think of when you think of summer? Most people, including me, think of sunshine, lemonade, swimming, and the beach. I don’t usually think of math. But for one week this summer, I went to math camp. I did it gladly. It was a lot of fun. Actually, a lot of my friends are also doing math camp this summer. Parents want kids to get excited about the topics they learn in school. Yet, a lot of kids feel like the math they learn in school is boring and hard. Going to math camp can be a chance to get kids excited about math. Some math camps make math more exciting by teaching advanced topics that are usually taught in college. One example is cryptography which uses math to create codes to send secret messages. By introducing it to kids they see how useful math is and that makes them feel excited. But teaching advanced topics also has its downside. One day, when I was at Girls Who Code, I was introduced to some problems in cryptography. It was a lot of fun to learn something so cool and interesting. However I didn’t feel like I fully understood it. I think that when you learn something complicated like that, you feel a little bit like you aren’t learning the real thing and you are just learning an easier version. You also feel like you don’t completely understand what they are teaching. Sometimes it is because it is too complicated, given the math you know. And sometimes even though it is simplified, the teachers can’t fully explain it in a simplified way, so you are confused about the part they don’t explain. The problems I did at my math camp this year were about the factors of numbers which required knowing what kids already learn in school, multiplication and counting. The material was at our level so we could fully understand it. Beyond that we needed to use reasoning skills. One problem we did asked us to find the smallest number with sixteen factors that doesn’t divide by six. Understanding what the problem is asking is easy but finding that number quickly is not so straightforward. I was sitting next to a friend of mine that is a little younger then me. “Do you want to work together?” I asked her. “Sure,” she said. I took my pencil and started writing out the different cases on the sheet. The problem isn’t that hard, but it would take forever to check numbers until you find one that works. Instead you have to construct a prime factorization that you know would have sixteen factors because of the powers. There are different options, but it is easy to find the smallest one. You also know that the number can either divide by two or divide by three but cannot divide by both two and three because it doesn’t divide by six. My friend and I talked about the problem and ruled out the cases that didn’t work, until we were left with the answer which was 280. I smiled. Solving the problem felt good. It always feels good to solve a math problem. Sometimes I figure out how to use a new technique even though I am not sure I can do the problem, but in this case it was because I felt good that I knew how to approach the problem. When you first see it, it’s hard to know how to get started. You could just try things but that seems like an endless task. I was lucky because I had seen such problems before. Either way, I still felt a sense of accomplishment. So in my opinion you don’t have to do an advanced topic to get excited about math. You can do simple problems. The excitement comes from solving a problem from beginning to end and fully understanding it. That is what is empowering. And like the cryptography problems, the problems I did are not only empowering, they are also cool. My dad who teaches classes at college thought the problems were so cool that he decided to give some of them at the university in the fall. Does that make it slightly more exciting for me? Maybe.
personal narrative
At the Dinner Table
Often I find myself coming home from school, and being utterly and completely bored, even after an entire bus ride of thought on what I want to do when I finally get there. I put my backpack away, head up to my room, and sit on my bed. And my mind’s seemingly gone blank. So I think and think, but nothing fun seems to come to mind. Minutes pass, and I still haven’t thought of anything. What usually ends up happening is I give up on trying to think of something to do, and I go to check what’s new on YouTube. Or Instagram. Or on a video game that my friends and I play together. Today I found myself in this same predicament, trying to find meaning in what I find myself thinking was pointless. As you might have guessed, it, well, didn’t work out. My mom called me for dinner, and I sat down and ate. My family treats dinner as a time to come together and talk, and even if what we talk about during dinner might sometimes seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, I later reflected that I had had a better time at dinner than any previous time in between then and when I got off the bus. Back to the story though. When dinner ended and I returned to my room, I decided not to get on my laptop again. Instead I plopped down onto a chair with a sigh and tried to think of why I was so bored. One of the constant subjects of conversation in my family is being happy with what you have, and I felt like I was failing horribly at that. I looked around my room and saw all the amazing things I was surrounded by. To tell the truth, I just felt even more frustrated. And then I felt ashamed for being frustrated. What right did I have to be so ungrateful for all of these things? Still in a bad mood, I rummaged through my closet until I laid my hands upon my box of Magic: the Gathering cards. I pulled it out and looked through them, and they were entertaining for a little while. But I still wasn’t happy. I thought maybe if I had more money I could buy more Magic cards, and then I would be happy. But I had no way to make money. I laid down on the carpet in defeat, boredom and depression washing over me like a wave. In my mind I was despairing; why couldn’t I feel any joy? So I began to think back. I thought back over all the times my parents had told me; happiness does not lie in the possession of things. I thought over all the times in my memory where I was happy and having fun. And I began to notice a pattern. At first it was only a glimmer. But that glimmer grew and grew until it became a sparkle, shining in my head. A realization. As I thought back, I realized that in all the times where I had fun, had joy, there were people surrounding me. At the dinner table, I was with family, with people I trusted and loved and had fun with. Playing Magic the Gathering, I was always with friends, people I trusted and loved and had fun with. Whenever I truly was happy, there were people at my side. Though I have been told many times that happiness lies not in the having of things, but in the hearts and minds of the people around you, I don’t think I have ever realized it with such a depth as I did tonight. So I want to encourage you, whenever you are having a rough day, whenever you’re depressed but still being entertained and you don’t know why you’re not happy, to know that it is probably because in your heart you miss somebody close to you, even if they are just downstairs. Looking back, I realize that all the video games I ever downloaded, all the board games I ever bought, they were all because they were a way to connect with my friends and family. In truth, they are the most important thing in my life, and without them, I couldn’t be happy. I might be entertained by things, but they only bring me joy if I can share the experience with somebody else. I hope that maybe one day I will be feeling bored, and I will remember tonight and remember that, no matter what, my family and my friends will always be what truly brings me joy in life. For they really do.
My Fancy Cake
Do you care about style? I do. I like things that are fancy and colorful with a lot of patterns and designs. My mom thinks that I just try to make things look crazy. But I don’t. It might seem crazy to other people, but it is just what I think is pretty. I think it looks boring otherwise. When it was time to choose the cake for my Bat Mitzvah, I made sure that it looked the way I wanted it, with many colors and patterns. Let me tell you what happened. The sliding door slid open and my mom and I walked into the store. My bat mitzvah was next week and we were going to order a fancy three tiered cake for the party. I was super excited because a fancy cake was one of things that I really wanted. I first decided that I wanted a fancy cake, when I saw one at my friend’s Bar Mitzvah. It really grabbed my attention. It was beautiful, and I knew I wanted mine to be just as spectacular. We weren’t going to make everything in my party fancy, but my mom said I could choose to make one thing fancy. The cake would be my thing to have however I liked it. I thought it was a crucial element to make the celebration really festive. I could just picture it. It would be dazzling and magnificent and exquisite. It would sit in the center of the table. Everyone would love it. It would be just as I hoped. I knew what it would look like too. I had a vision from the beginning. My family and I discussed it to make sure they liked the design too. We planned it all out before we went to the store. Planning it out took a long time, since my mom disagreed with me on many things. The design I wanted was going to have three different colors for each layer and flowers cascading over it. My mom thought that flowers were nice, but she wanted three shades of one color instead of three different colors. “Mom, I want it to be colorful.” I said over and over. “How about three shades of yellow?” she asked. “You want yellow, so let’s do three shades of yellow. It will look much more elegant.” “Mom, I don’t want it to be elegant. I want it to be colorful.” I kept repeating. She kept saying that it was my cake, but I still had to convince her. “ Look,” she said, showing me a picture of a cake online. “Here is a picture of a cake with three shades of yellow. Isn’t it pretty?” “How about this picture?” I asked. “These are the colors I want.” When my mom saw the picture, she admitted it looked nice and agreed to go with my way. Then we talked about many other things. The leaves would be light green not dark green. The flowers would be red. The yellow layer would be on top followed by coral, and then gold. My mom and I had discussed every tiny little detail. We had talked and talked until we came up with the perfect cake. But, now we were done. My mom had agreed to go with the cake I wanted. Placing the order at the store would be easy. I followed my mom to the bakery section of the store. We looked at the book of designs and quickly flipped through the options. The exact design we were going to have wasn’t there. But it wasn’t a problem. We quickly found a similar one. We then started looking at the colors to make sure they had what we wanted. They had everything. We were having yellow, coral, and gold layers with red roses and light green leaves. Everything was set. We were about to fill out the form when we noticed something. This cake also had dots piped around each layer and we never talked about their color. I flipped through the colors again. “How about teal?” I asked. I thought that teal would add one more pretty color to the design. My mom frowned. “Teal?”, she asked. “How about orange, or something that matches.” “I don’t want it to be too monochromatic,” I replied. “Fine,” my mom said. “It is your cake. Choose whatever you want. I am staying out of it.” I could tell she was not pleased. I thought teal would look nice. But I was not sure. It is hard to pick something when I feel like no one else thinks it is nice. Then again, orange would be boring. My mom did say I could choose. I stared at the colors and tried to imagine the cake and decide. “Mom what do you think,” I asked her again. “Whatever you want,” she said again in an exasperated tone. “Fine,” I decided. “Then teal.” I was not sure, but I decided to go with my instinct. I wanted the cake to be colorful not boring. It would make my party much more festive. The dots would be teal. The next Friday, I was super excited as I got into the car after school. “Give me your phone,” I told my mom. She had picked up the cake and delivered it to the synagogue for the next day while I was in school and I had reminded her, 10,000 times, to take a picture so that I could get to see it immediately. As she handed me the phone she said, “It is even nicer than you could have imagined.” As I looked at the picture, I saw that she was right. It was beautiful. Even my mom admitted that the teal was a good choice and that she was glad we went with it. I was glad too. I was really pleased with how the cake came out. Everyone at the party liked it. It was gorgeous. It was colorful and flowery
