Maths and I had always had a little bit of a rocky relationship. Even from primary school, the constant fear of failing in class scared me, because I felt there was the expectation to understand everything and not ask for help. Therefore, in some ways, I could say that it created a stigma around how I looked at maths.

However, this lack of understanding left me falling behind compared to those in my class, even though I hadn’t completely realised it. I was actually stopping myself from improving just because I was afraid of asking for help when I needed it.

Eventually this caught up with me, and at the end of my last year of primary school I was dropped down a class. This negative wording of “dropping down a class or set” made me feel like I was failing and that I would never be as smart again (although actually it was for my benefit to go slower).

I continued this negative outlook of maths into my secondary school years 7 to 10. During this time, I never answered or participated in a class unless I knew I was one hundred percent right. It was in year 10 that I realised once more that I couldn’t seem to understand what others in my class managed to do right away. This resulted in me giving up straight away if I couldn’t answer something, and so I didn't have any drive to continue.

When exams came and I scored below average, I knew that once again I would drop down. This deteriorated my confidence surrounding maths completely.

However, this lower class was slower and explained more. I found that I began to understand better. That’s when I also began working with Masha. Gradually, I realised that maths wasn’t something I needed to be afraid of but something that I just needed to work on through my confidence and resilience. After working in classes, at home and with the support from Masha, I began to succeed more and started seeing better results in how I was even able to tackle work in classes and homework.

Recently, thanks to a lot of support from teachers and Masha, I moved back up a set where I completely understand and am not scared to ask for help. Through this, I had incredible teachers showing me that it was okay to not understand at first or to get things wrong, because, even though I hadn’t seen it before, many people felt the same way.

Maths can look scary but taking a step back and looking at the problem as a puzzle rather than an overwhelming challenge to solve, and just starting instead of skipping, was the best advice I was ever given. Just start where you can and keep going.