Ghadah Alkhalifah 094 CBW Prof. Carol Wilson-Duffy Essay 1 Final Draft February 27, 2018 Keep thinking! “Look! She is a physicist, she must be smart!”. This is what I am used to hearing from people around me and it does not mean I am intelligent or a gifted person. However, I tend to think deeply about problems in order to associate a relationship between givens and formulas of physics to find a solution in limit amount of time. Therefore, being a creative problem solver in physics assisted me to be an outstanding student in my childhood, get my dream job as an instructor at university, and foster me to pursue my study. In my childhood, my mother noticed that solving jigsaw puzzle was my favorite game which gave my mother an idea about …show more content…
At the age of 13, my math teacher chose me to represent my school in a competition. I was surprised and happy at the same time. I said to myself that because I was different, and I had a unique ability, my teacher picked me rather than my classmates. My teacher advised me to prepare and gave me a lot of math problems with the answers. At the beginning, I faced a hard time since I could not conceptualize the method that produced the right answer and spent the whole night working on few problems, but unfortunately when I checked my results in the key, they just did not match. Hence, the next day, I went to her office and told her that I had given up and the level of those problems was not suitable for me. Nevertheless, my teacher persuaded me to keep working hard and said she would give me some general steps that were sufficient to develop my skills in solving problems. The first step was reading a problem carefully to make sure that I understood the given information and the unknowns that I needed to find them. Second, I should try to represent the givens in algebraic representations to make an equation and check my answer to see whether it was reasonable or not. For instance, “In a cafeteria, 3 coffees …show more content…
As soon as I graduated from science college in physics, I realized that I needed to work, but there were not many positions available in my city. I was disappointed since my GPA was high and my major was physics, which is rare and difficult. One day, my friend called me and told me that there were positions at the university where I studied and recommended me to apply. I was not enthusiastic because the university has strict conditions to accept a new faculty member. The applicants must undergo a test which contained complex problems and have three interviews with a committee of faculty members, head of department and a dean. The procedure was strict, but I applied when my friend encouraged me. My friend reminded me of the difficult assignments with many problems to be solved in a short period of time that we did when we were students. Fortunately, I passed the exam and then I entered the interviews where I had to answer any questions directly like explaining the uncertainty principle or wave-particle duality. It was challenging. Anxiety was my companion that day, but because of my reputation for being a good thinker, I got the job and became a teaching