When I Grow Up….
When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a banker. I honestly don’t really know why, but that’s what I always wanted to be. When my grade school teachers took all of the students on a field trip to the village area at the Magic House, I “applied” to be a banker. I knew banking meant that I got to do math and I really liked math at the time. I was formulate enough to be the “Banker Manager” at the Magic House for the field trip. We cashed all the other works play pay checks and taught the students how to fill out a deposit slip and write a check. This is one of my fondest memories from my childhood.
Continuing into middle and high school, I always excelled at math so I figured banking would be a safe bet and something that would always be needed. However, once I got into more complicated math, banking seemed less and less appealing to me.
After taking many more math classes, I realized I liked and wanted to continue with math, but not banking. My middle school opinion was that I did not want to sit at a computer all day with a calculator doing math. I found a passion for fashion as one may say, and out went the banker passion.
I still am fond of math and honestly find myself into crunching numbers quiet frequently. I am thankful for my initial interest because now I know how to calculate interest rates and things like that.
Now, as written in other posts of mine, I study fashion merchandising and I am hoping to be able to use my math skills as a buyer one day!
Whatever you decided to do as a career, even if you do not know when you make it to college, know you have time and people to help you. But, most importantly, pick a career that is going to be fulfilling and challenge you as well as maintain your interest for a few decades!
Xoxo,
Claire
Tagged as:
career,
fashion merchandising,
Majors,
math
My name is Jessica Jordan. I am majoring in Computer Science and technology and Cyber security. I chose to pursue this major because I do well with computers. I am intrigued when it comes down to technology. My strongest subject is mathematics. So I can say that I not only chose my major it chose me. I want to find a career that deals with me being on a computer 24/7, constantly gathering and finding new ways to perform math problems. I can’t wait to see how the world will change as time goes on. As time goes on technology will continue to evolve and become more and more a part of our daily lives.
Tagged as:
choosing a major,
computer science,
cyber security,
Major,
math,
technology
Imagine a world without the letter “R.” Pretty hard, right? (That last phrase, omitting the letter “R,” would read as such: “Petty had, ight?”) It’s pretty obvious letter “R” is a vital letter in the English alphabet. And, as someone whose first and last names depend on “R” for that amazing connecting sound, I’m currently learning how important another version of “R” is.
This semester, I’m taking an independent study course in R Statistics and Bioconductor software with Dr. Newton of the Fontbonne Math Department. This is my third course with Dr. N, and she is great. In fall 2012 when I took her advanced statistics course, we used a program called MiniTab in order to do our statistical work. MiniTab is an awesome program with a ton of great applications – don’t get me wrong – but one setback is that it is very expensive. R, on the other hand, is a free open-access program. Though extremely finicky at times, R can do a lot of the same things that other statistical programs like MiniTab and Excel can do.
Since the beginning of the semester, I’ve been attempting to understand how R works. It hasn’t been an easy process; at first, it took me over forty-five minutes just to input my simple two-column data table into R. And I’m still having a difficult time with saving my work – one time, we had a power outage, so I literally lost over six hours’ worth of calculations and data interpretation.
All in all, I’m happy to be taking this course, even though it is an elective that I don’t actually need in order to graduate. Working with Dr. Newton is great, and revisiting important statistical concepts proves to be a good experience. So though I’ve been saying “ARGH!” a lot while working with R, I’m happy to be taking this course.
Tagged as:
advanced statistics,
electives,
math,
Minitab,
R Statistics,
statistics
My favorite class this semester is my Edu201 class. There is a lot to this class, and I am really getting a lot out of it. We meet for 2 hours and 45 minutes on Tuesdays and beginning next week, the last hour of the class will be spent mentoring a few of the middle school students. I am really excited to begin working one-on-one with some of the kids. I hope to be able to work with at least one of the 7th graders that I work with when I observe. My favorite part of this course is that I am required to observe in the Brentwood Middle School for a minimum of 30 hours this semester. Since I am a math major I am paired up with the 7th grade math teacher and I am loving it.
I go on Fridays and am there for 3 hours so I am there for 2 full classes, and I’ve really gotten to know some of the students in those 2 classes. It’s so much fun to be able to help them, and see them figure out problems on their own. This class is certainly confirming the fact that I want to be a teacher and that I am on the right track here at Fontbonne!
Fontbonne’s Education department is terrific and everyone is so helpful!
Tagged as:
Education,
math,
teacher,
teaching
