Creativity break: When did you first realize that you liked algebra | Algebra 1 | Khan Academy

[Music] One day, my family was building this fence around my chicken coop because there were problems with raccoons. We wanted to make sure that the perimeter of the fence was like twice the length of the width.

I remember thinking this is exactly like my algebra class. Like, I'm actually doing things that are useful! Algebra wasn't just something that you do on paper; it's something that was actually protecting the lives of my chickens.

So, I felt like that was a moment for me where math is useful to the world, and we're solving real problems with it. It's really powerful. I realized that I first liked algebra and just math in general during my first year in college.

I was a little bit of a late bloomer in realizing the importance of math. I was taking an early statistics course for my psychology degree, and I really began to understand how the concepts that I was learning could help me understand the world around me better in a more concrete, fluid, and rich way.

Being able to make that connection from these things that I'm learning in the classroom out into the real world helped me understand different phenomena. I can understand how various things in our culture work and progress.

This realization really helped me and made me feel like I had a deeper understanding of the importance of math and algebra. From that point, I've really been in love. [Music]