Math, Krystyna, and Me Anonymous

My love for math came about through a sort of associative learning. I didn’t start loving math because it was math, but because it was the class I always had with my best friend Krystyna. It began in third grade when our class was separated into three different math classes, and when Krystyna and I were placed in the same one, we were beyond ecstatic. Soon, that class became our favorite and from then on, math was always our thing and we made it fun.

“Hey, Krystyna, I bet I can memorize more digits of pi than you.” That contest ended when we both surrendered at 60 digits. “Cassandra, I bet I can multiply 542 by 236 faster than you!” Spoiler alert: it’s 127,912 and I won by half a second. This contest prompted many rematches and to this day, we’re not really sure who won in the end. Contests like these went back and forth for many years. They were a way for us to combine our childish desire to win and our intellectual hunger to learn more and more math.

Although the math contests have since ended, math class is still our best Cassandra-Krystyna time and my love for math has never died. Not only has the subject honed my problem-solving skills, it has brought me a best friend and a class to look forward to. In fact, math class has...