Today’s IMACS blog post is by guest author and EMF Math student, Vievie Romanelli. Vievie recently sent us the following letter via email and kindly agreed to let us share it with our blog readers.
Dear IMACS,
I’m writing to let you know that EMF has been an incredibly important part of my intellectual growth. It’s given me the tools to understand serious math, and it’s encouraged me to be curious about it.
Nowadays, when going to a new bookstore, my first stop is in the math section. I love that I can pick up any math book and actually understand what’s being said, even if it’s in a field I’ve never considered before.
This semester, in addition to continuing with EMF, I’m taking calculus using the MIT OpenCourseWare 18.01SC. EMF has prepared me well, and so far, it has been very approachable and fun (not to mention easier than my current EMF course!)
Over the years, my interests have developed. I’m not completely sure what I want to do. I still love computer science, but for now, I mostly want to study pure math.
It’s given me the tools to understand serious math, and it’s encouraged me to be curious about it.
EMF introduced me to the concept of proofs. From the beginning, I knew they were completely different from anything else I had learned, and I was hooked.
My favorite EMF course has been Relational and Ordered Operational Systems. It was incredible to realize that what seemed to me to be inherent properties of sets, like density, could sometimes be changed completely.
As I have begun to interview for college admissions, I’ve been asked about why I want to study math. For most people I’ve talked to, it’s inconceivable. I realized once again how unusual of an opportunity I’ve had to see the beautiful and creative side of math, beyond the formulas most people are limited to.
Thank you,
Vievie Romanelli
EMF Math is an online curriculum for talented secondary school students that uses a foundation of discrete mathematics to launch students into modern proof-based mathematics while covering all of pre-algebra through precalculus.
Vievie is also an eIMACS computer science student. Learn more about the online computer science courses that she studied.