Personal Narrative Analysis

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I’ve been doing competition math for years. It started as a personal challenge; math competitions allowed me to prove my intelligence. I was reasonably talented and fiercely competitive, and those qualities helped me become a strong, successful competitor.

One summer, I spent anywhere from three to nine hours per day studying, learning new theorems and tricks that appeared frequently in competitions. My study extended beyond mathematical knowledge. Hoping to improve my scores, I micromanaged everything from my sleep schedule to my diet.

But I can’t remember doing math until the end of my eighth-grade year.

The problem was cute, as much as a math problem can be - it involved a frog jumping around blindly on lily pads, hoping to reach the shore instead of being eaten by a ravenous alligator. Chases, escapes. True love. Miracles. It appeared near the end of a difficult competition - all of my previous experienced suggested that the problem was beyond me. …show more content…
And so on the night of the test, instead of checking and double-checking my answers, I dreamt of lily pads.

Eventually, I came up with a solution. It shouldn’t have worked; a problem as difficult as this one shouldn’t have such such a simple solution. The answer was right, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this solution was too elegant, too simple, too cheeky to be allowed.

Soon thereafter, my history teacher taught a lesson on Alexander the Great, relaying the legend of the Gordian Knot. Alexander was tasked with loosing a monstrous knot; after some thought, he said “It makes no difference how it is loosed,” drew his sword, and cut the knot.

That’s what my solution was. The problem seemed difficult, but all it took was one insight to cut the knot.

I had thought that math was about effort; that solving harder problems means solving bigger, more complicated equations. Math is about insight, and so this was the first time that I did

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