What is Math Anxiety?
I recall sitting at a restaurant and being next to a table of four people who were around their late mid twenties .I noticed that when the waitress brought them their bill they were struggling to figure out how much to pay her in tips. They looked at each other with dubious dispositions, trying to act as if they knew what they were doing when in fact they were stumped by the minute mathematical calculation. This situation lasted for quite a while until one of the six said: “Can you believe this? We are graduate students and we aren’t sure how to make out how much we should pay as tip. This is hilarious!”
What these graduate students were expressing was the feeling of math anxiety. Math anxiety is characterized by feelings of strong frustration or loss of confidence in one's ability to do math. Math anxiety consists of symptoms such as negative thinking (talking down on yourself), lack of incentive with math work, lack of studying, procrastinating math homework for the last minute, panicking with tests or homework, having a hard time recalling math facts, and counting on memorization rather than comprehending the material.
One would expect that these graduate students would know how to calculate something so trivial such as this, but even the most educated people go through this. A simple way to react to this type of situation is to stay relax and be confident. The foundation of math anxiety is a loss in confidence, but a person just needs to keep in mind that anxiety of math is very common. If a person acts as if they are confident eventually they will believe it and they will become it. It is also good to remember that people should just concentrate on what you have to do and not speculate on what others maybe thinking about your performance. In the end, their opinion of you or how you do in math doesn’t define you as person unless you allow it to.
What these graduate students were expressing was the feeling of math anxiety. Math anxiety is characterized by feelings of strong frustration or loss of confidence in one's ability to do math. Math anxiety consists of symptoms such as negative thinking (talking down on yourself), lack of incentive with math work, lack of studying, procrastinating math homework for the last minute, panicking with tests or homework, having a hard time recalling math facts, and counting on memorization rather than comprehending the material.
One would expect that these graduate students would know how to calculate something so trivial such as this, but even the most educated people go through this. A simple way to react to this type of situation is to stay relax and be confident. The foundation of math anxiety is a loss in confidence, but a person just needs to keep in mind that anxiety of math is very common. If a person acts as if they are confident eventually they will believe it and they will become it. It is also good to remember that people should just concentrate on what you have to do and not speculate on what others maybe thinking about your performance. In the end, their opinion of you or how you do in math doesn’t define you as person unless you allow it to.
