Story Transcript:

“Okay, so my name is Dayanara. I'm 27 years old. I currently live in the Bronx. I come from Rockland County Upstate. And I went to school in North Rockland High School. And I also went to Rockland Community College for two semesters for criminal justice. Okay, so I'm going to give an experience about mathematics. Growing up, I kind of like, I was rebellious, you know, my mom didn't really have much discipline with me, and going to school wasn't really a priority. So, at an early age, I was set in PM school, it wasn't, it wasn't an all day school, it was basically like, all the curricular and academics in three hours. And we had to get all that done in three hours. My favorite class was math. And it was because I was good at it. And I didn't know I was good at it until you know, my other peers, and my teacher pointed it out that I was, you know, good at math. And my teacher, every day, I would go to school, the days that I would go to school, he would tell me, like, 'please just come to school, you got this, you have so much potential and just come to school.' Like he would really like push me to come to school, just because he knew I had so much potential. And it touched me because I was like, wow, like, he sees something in me that I didn't really even see myself or I didn't care to see it myself. And, you know, that touched me. And I was always an accelerated math. So, you know, that was one of my, one of my areas of greatest success. It made me feel good, it made me feel smart, like because I've always felt like less than, or like inadequate with other subjects. Because I always had like the lowest grades or like, I wouldn't really focus much in class. But in math, it was like, I didn't even have to focus. It just, I just knew it. It was like natural to me. And I would always get called to the board, or all the students would look at me for the answers. And it was just like, I felt good. I felt like I was on top of them. You know what I'm saying? Like I was on top of my class. So it made me feel confident. It made me feel really confident in myself. I mean, I don't think there is…I don't want to not carry on, I think I do want to continue and I do continue. I do want to continue on going to school, I do want to, you know, keep learning, I think, you know, there's always room for learning. There's always little room for improving. So I think that's something that I do want to get back into. And now that I'm older and I have an older mindset, and I have a child and a lot of responsibilities. I think that's something that I should definitely get into and explore it more. See, see what I can get out of it. Thanks."