2012 has started and time surely moves swiftly as we move into the first weekend of the new year. How was your 2011? Has it been a great year where you have managed to fulfill all your 2011 resolution? Or has it been another year of more ‘it could have been’ and ‘if only.’ I certainly hope it was not the latter.

How about your results in your study? Did you get your desired results? I certainly hope so too. If you have not, fret not. It is not the end of the world. You might have lost a battle but you have not lost the war; just ensure that you do it better, not just any better but your very best. Give it all you have gotten and left no room for ‘it could have been’ and ‘if only.’ Life is too short for these.

One thing about study and in most things in life is that we can ‘think’ our way to good results or to get whatever we want morally. Bullshit! Yes, you are right in way, especially if we are talking about wishful thinking. Anyone can wishfully think himself/herself to good result and I can tell you right now that it will not happen. However, not everyone is willing to think to good result.

Thus, everyone can think to good result but not everyone is willing to do that. Most are just wishful thinking. You may ask me, “What do you mean by thinking to good result? Isn’t it the same as wishful thinking?” What I would like to clarify is that while you are thinking about getting good result, you are also thinking about how to get the good result and that will make all the differences.

And it is not enough to be thinking about getting good result. We will still have to take the final step – the very key step to getting there and that is to take massive action. Nothing will come through without massive action and this is the very different between thinking and wishful thinking. Without massive action, just thinking alone is just like wishful thinking.

Frankly speaking, I was quite sad as I felt sorry for those who replied with the above and yet I sincerely hope that one day they will be exposed to such possibility and they will realise the potential that each and everyone of them has, which is waiting to be unleashed!

From a partner who shared, “I respect each opinion; each opinion is based on his/her individual ability to perform. Some people earn $10 an hour, while others earn $1000 an hour. When you tell those who earn $10 an hour that people can earn $1000 an hour, they will say it is impossible. But I respect them also because this is their opinions based on their ability.”

During the stone age, it would take about an hour to walk from Mines Resort to Jaya Jusco Cheras Selatan. It would have taken that long before the invention of the automobile and trust me on this as I had tried once before; walking from Mines Resort to Jaya Jusco Cheras Selatan. However, in the modern day, it will take barely about five minutes to reach Jusco from Mines. If we were to explain to a caveman that we could reach Jusco in five minutes, he/she would have said, “Impossible or bullshit” too. And we can’t blame him/her as his/her opinion is based on his/her ability.

What I can say is that there are more uses for trigonometry that we would know; “The techniques in trigonometry are used for finding relevance in navigation particularly satellite systems and astronomy, naval and aviation industries, oceanography, land surveying, and in cartography (creation of maps),” according to this article. And yet from another website, trigonometry was mentioned to be used in the measuring of heights of buildings, surveying or maybe stock market or business cycles.

In one of the examples in the above website, it was used to construct a 3 dimensional 5 pointed star. In another example from the above website, trigonometry was used to help a frustrated homeowner to correctly calculate the area of her lot.

In fact, trigonometry is also used in digital imaging in medicine. Quoting from the first article,

“The next time you go in for an advanced scanning procedure, be sure to check out how the sine and cosine functions you learn at school find a practical application is medical techniques such as CAT and MRI scanning, in detecting tumors and even in laser treatments. Whoever said studying math has only an academic value! Need other reasons to know how formulae in trigonometry make life easier for you?“

After knowing some of the uses of trigonometry, let us get back to the topic in your Form 3 Math. What do you need to know? Basically, there are 3 key points you need to know in this chapter to master it:

Tangent, Sine & Cosine: Only when we have a right-angled triangle in discussion, then we talk about these three trigonometry function. You have to remember the information relating to the picture above. Many students are confused with which is opposite and which is adjacent. Before deciding which is which, we have to fix which angle is in discussion. Once we fix the angle, as its name implies, the ‘opposite’ is opposite the angle in discussion and ‘Adjacent’ is on the same side of the angle. As for the hypotenuse, it is always the longer side. You can use mnemonic to remember the three different ratios for Tangent, Sine and Cosine. One of them, which I learned in secondary school many years back, is ‘TOA,’ ‘CAH,’ and ‘SOH,’ which mean big foot in Hokkien.

When you enter the exam hall, what is in your mind? What results do you expect you will get in this subject?

Some of you might think: “If I pass the exam, I’m happy already.”

Some might say: “Well, I just want to sustain my previous result. As long as I don’t fail.”

Or, “It will be great if I get an A2, but I think I am not going to make it.”

Or even “I have no idea. Depends on my fate.”

Guess what will a smart student think before he enters the exam hall?

“I WANT TO Get my A1, no matter how tough it is, no matter what it takes from me. I deserved to have my A1!”

In order to get an A1, the first criteria is how confident are you when you enter the exam hall. You must entertain the possibility to get an A1. Only in the right state you can have a calm mind to read the questions carefully and understand what the questions want.

Some students have the habit of asking friends around him what they have revised before entering the exam hall. Will that help you? Definitely no. Reason is when you ask around usually you will find that your friends have studied certain topics but you didn’t. Then you will start to panic. You will start to blame yourself why you forgot to study that topic. You will start to worry if the paper will come out the topic you can’t answer it. Everything becomes wrong. Your mind started to defocus. When you are in the exam hall you can’t read the questions properly. Not careful mistakes started to appear in your answer sheet.

Is that familar to you? It does not help you at all. It will only drive away your focus. You will focus on the place that you don’t want. Based on Law of Attraction, you are sending the negative energy to the universe and attract things that you don’t want. High chance it will happen in front of you.

Therefore, at least 30 minutes before the exam, you should start to prepare your mind to be in the right state for the exam. Tell yourself you are well-prepared for the exam. It does not matter how other people prepare for the exam. Walk into the exam confidently. You are thinking big. As what Anthony Robbin says, your state change your physiology. Your physiology change your energy. And your energy change your results!

True enough, my strong belief in studying hard translated directly into the good grades I had for Math, A Math, Physics and Chemistry in my O-Level examination. In fact in my A Math papers, for the first time in my life, I managed to finish it with ample time to spare to check through my papers. Even before the result was out for my A Math, I was already confident that I had gotten an ‘A’ for it.

As for my languages and humanity subject, the doubts and beliefs I had about myself translated to my not so impressive grades for both subjects. Even during my A-Level examination, I aced in my C Math and either Chemistry or Physics. As for my Further Mathematics, I only got a ‘C.’ It didn’t come as a surprise because I had not worked very hard for it and in fact I didn’t practice enough. Looking back at the efforts I put in the O-Level and A-Level exams, it is even clearer now the strong relationship between my belief in hardwork and results.

That is why in my email to the parents, I wrote, “The best gift we could give to them is the gift to first believe in their own abilities and then to take action.” It is not enough to just believe in their own abilities. The change in their results will come from the follow through action that they will be taking.

Advo’s Turbocharge! Workshop is a workshop specially engineered for children between the age of 13-17 to help the youths discover more about themselves through a journey of self reflection and exploration. One of the top training programs for kids in Singapore, this highly interactive workshop will help to open the minds of children to see themselves bigger than who they are now. Through the workshop, your children will create new empowering mindsets and beliefs about themselves. With these new empowering mindsets and beliefs about themselves, they will go on to achieve academic excellence and successes in life.

As the saying goes, “Change your mind, change your world!” When we focus on the root of the issue, we not only nib the issue at its root, we also create a long-lasting solution. The good grades will follow.

Before letting you in on the secret to learning math, promise me that you will make good use of it or you may stop reading from this point onward. And also promise me that you will share this secret with anyone who is finding it a challenge to learn Math. Albert Einstein said it best when he said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” The key here is he stayed with his problems longer. There is something similar in what I have always shared with my kids, that I am not any smarter than them. The only reason why I am good in Math today is because of the past many years of experience accumulated from practicing. I did not particularly stayed longer with the problems like what Einstein did; I just did a lot of practice.

Malcolm Gladwell shared in his book Outliers about a video tape which Math Professor Alan Schoenfeld made of a woman named Renee as she was trying to solve a math problem. Renee was a nurse and wasn’t someone particularly interested in Mathematics. In the video, Renee was playing with a software program designed to teach algebra. And she was trying to figure out what numbers to enter in order to get the computer to draw a line that is absolutely vertical. She was trying to figure out the gradient for a vertical line. However, being someone who has not been a Math expert, she was finding it challenging to figure out the numbers.

When most students or people would have given up already, she stayed with the problem for twenty-two minutes before finally figuring out that a vertical line can be obtained by dividing any number by zero, which gives an undefined number and which means that the slope of a vertical line is undefined. I have seen students giving up attempt on Math questions in less than 2 minutes.

Most people would have thought that being good in Math is an innate ability; either you are good with Math or you’re not. But from the video made by Professor Schoenfeld, being good in Math could simply mean whether you are willing to try and stay with a problem for as long as twenty-two minutes. As Malcolm put it, “… it’s not so much ability as attitude.”

Quoting a paragraph from Outliers,

“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.“

What do you want to see in your PMR or SPM examination certificate? You may be asking me just what do I mean by asking you that question; it is not as if you can design your own certification. On the contrary, you have as much to say as you want to in your certificate. You can even ‘design’ the grades that you want to see on it; be it an ‘A’ for BM or an ‘A’ for Sejarah or an ‘A’ for Geografi or ‘A’ for both Math and Science. Or simply just straight ‘A’s for all subjects.

Stop reading at this very moment. Take out a piece of A4 size paper and start writing down all the subjects you are required to take for the PMR or SPM examination and create another column besides it and write down all the grades that you want in that column. Let me stress again – write down all the grades that you want to get in your examination. It is normal to doubt if you can really get all the grades that you want but just put it all down anyway. There is another more effective way to do it; find someone who has already gotten his/her PMR or SPM certificate, then make a photocopy of it and then erase the name on it and put down your own name. Then erase all the grades of that person and put down the grades that you want on that certificate.

After you are done, paste this certificate at a place where you can see very often and where your family can see it too so that they can remind you often. Do take this exercise very seriously as the moment you are doing this exercise, your grades are already changing.

Now that you are done with that simple exercise, let us talk about putting that ‘designed’ certification into reality. Putting that grades on your photocopied certificate is a way of wishing or hoping that you will really get all that grades. There is a different between just wishing and hoping for it to happen and working effortlessly towards it. If you are doing the topic of Probability in Form 5 A Math, you would know that the Probability of just wishing for the straight ‘A’s is as good as zero.

However, if you start building foundation to that wish of yours, you have a much higher chance of making it real just as Walt Disney built the foundation to his dream of Disneyland. And what do I mean by building the foundation to your wish? Simply put, I am talking about putting in the extra hard work and taking action in your study, especially in the subjects which you are not doing well now. Put in as much effort, if not more, as you had in your Dota, or Facebook game or anything which you are already doing very well in. When it comes to Mathematics, the hard work or effort is synonymous to practicing; do as much past year questions as you can.

Just the other day I was marking some A Math assignments in Trigonometry and Function by a student that I got quite pissed off; my blood was literally boiling. And for a very good why I should be pissed off: she has been giving me the same not careful mistakes again and again; it was (x – 3) in one moment and then when she copied it to the next part of the question, it became (x + 3) and everything was not right after that.

The very reason I was so pissed is because she knew exactly how to do the question. She followed the right strategy and steps in solving the Function question but she gave away marks to these kind of not careful mistakes. Trigonometry is a bigger challenge to her at this point but it will get better for sure with more practice. Right now she needs to take care of a few fundamental issues first which is crippling her progress in A Math. We will work together to take down these issues one by one. There is not much time to lose before she takes her Trial Examination follows by her SPM examinations at the end of the year.

On Wednesday while I was coaching her, we talked about her dream to study Aeronautical Engineering. I asked if she really has the passion in doing it. Depending on the fields of study which she will pursue in Aeronautical Engineering, whether she likes it or not, she will have to deal with higher Mathematics. In fact, in most engineering course, she will need to take higher mathematics. And thus it is important to build her foundation well now. I told her if Aeronautical Engineering is really her passion, then she will surely find all ways to break down all the challenges to get there.

She shared with me that she doesn’t hate A Math, it’s just that she can’t seem to understand it. I wasn’t surprising she couldn’t seem to understand it. In Mathematics, we not only have to understand the concept, we also have to practice; which is the thing she has not been doing yet. And being a kinesthetic person, who learn best by doing, then all the more she needs to practice. Just as a question I have always asked her, “How did you remember all the lyrics?” She told me she just sung them again and again and again. She responded that if only A Math was like singing. I said, “Why not? I am not stopping you. If you find that by singing it out you can remember, then by all mean sing it out!”

School reopening also signifies ‘Judgement Day’ for most of you as you would be getting your results for the mid-year examination starting today. How did you do for your mid-year examination? Did you pass it with flying colours? I’m very sure some of you would be delighted with the results you are getting while others would be disappointed. Well done to all who had done well for your examination and for those who did badly or not so well, it is time to buck up; you might have lost this battle, but you have yet to lose the war!

Crazy as it may sound, it is still highly possible to reclaim your ‘As‘ in the final year examination. Who has the say to your result at the end of the day? Who is responsible for your result at the end of the day? Make a smart guess? I believe that most of you will agree that YOU and ONLY YOU can change the marks or grades that you are seeing in your report card. One of the most common answers I got for this was “It is impossible!”

Quoting something from Master Yoda in Star Wars, “This is why you failed!” Indeed, the question is not in the possibility because it is possible for most students to get good results. The questions are whether you want it or not and whether you are willing to work for it. How many of us have really put in extraordinary hard work in the things which we want to be better in? If we had and we are still not getting the results that we hoped for, then it could probably be a wrong method we were using. Otherwise, there would be no case where we had put in the hard work and we are not getting great result.

We are almost done with the PMR Power Revision for Math and Science. From what I observed of the student, he has a good understanding of Math. The key issue is in the lack of practice. Without practice, he does not see a broad varieties of questions for each topic. When a question is twisted a little, he wasn’t able to solve it. And he was always telling me that it is impossible to score ‘A’ for his Math and Science. He is right as he is ‘not willing’ or does not want it badly enough to put in the effort to practice.

Most of you have been taught the basic. The next thing to do is to put in a little effort to remember the basic. I know you do not like memorizing. Neither do I. How else can we remember something? Through practicing of course. When we do practice, especially for Math and Science, the basic and concept will eventually be ‘drilled’ into our head.

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch you won’t

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost,
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will;
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.