Doing Push Ups and Doing Math
Mr. Yeo’s favourite exercise is doing push ups. Mr. Yeo does push ups every day. Two years ago, Mr. Yeo could barely do five push ups! Mr. Yeo was weak and is quite old but Mr. Yeo did not give up! He forces himself to do push ups every day.
Mr. Yeo did his push ups even when he didn’t feel like doing any. It was very difficult at first but Mr. Yeo kept doing them anyway.
As time passed, the push ups got easier. Today Mr. Yeo can do 40 push ups at one go.
Doing Math is like doing push ups. You may think that it is very hard initially. You will feel like giving up! But do it daily anyway! After some time, you will get better at it. You will start to like Math and be strong in the subject.
Just like Mr. Yeo who is now stronger and able to do some of these more difficult yoga poses, you will be able to do the more challenging Math questions! Mr. Yeo is more than 60 years old. You are less than 16! If Mr. Yeo can do push ups, you can do Math!
Your Beliefs and Math
Mr. Yeo’s favourite daughter is Sharon. Sharon pursued a Business Management degree majoring in Finance at Singapore Management University (SMU). Sharon likes SMU’s culture and energy. She joined many CCAs and made many friends.
Sharon found time amid her heavy academic workload to found a technology startup with a friend in her third year of study. Their startup won the SMU Innovation Award and she won the SMBA Youth Entrepreneur Award.
During her time in SMU, Sharon noticed that the university has not had a female valedictorian since 2005. Sharon decided to do something about it.
In 2016, Sharon became SMU’s first female valedictorian in 11 years! Mr. Yeo is quite proud of her. Sharon has been taught from a young age to believe in her limitless potential.
You too have limitless potential!
Maybe your beliefs are holding you back from achieving your best results. Beliefs like “Boys are better at Math than girls” which, by the way, is absolutely not true. A large majority of my female students scored As for both E-math and A-math. So, change your beliefs and change your results!
Never Give Up! If Jack can Do Math, so can You!
Mr. Yeo’s favourite book on Jack Ma.
Mr. Yeo’s favourite Chinese entrepreneur is Jack Ma. Jack was born in Hangzhou, China. When he was a boy, he fell in love with the English language! He would give foreign visitors a free tour of the famous West Lake area in his city. In return, he gets to practise English with them. He did this for nine years and he eventually became an English teacher.
However, Jack was not good in Math. When he took the National College Entrance Examinations (gaokao), he scored 1 out of 120 for Math*.
Jack was sad but he did not give up. He took the gaokao again and this time his Math score improved to 19 out of 120. Again, Jack did not give up. On his third attempt, he scored 89 marks.
In 1999, Jack founded Alibaba. Alibaba is an e-commerce company with revenue of US$56 billion (2019) and employs more than 100,000 people. Alibaba owns Taobao.
Today, Jack Ma is worth US$35 billion. Not too bad for a boy who was struggling with Math.
(Btw $1 billion = $1 000 000 000)
The one lesson you can learn from Jack Ma is that you should never give up! When you don’t succeed, find out what went wrong. Then try a new solution. Try a new approach. Most importantly, try again!
*From Alibaba The House That Jack Built, by Duncan Clark.