I was sitting by the living room, while my family was eating dinner with my aunt, uncle, and little cousin who just got in from Toronto, I was flooded with a pile of math problems that had to be completed by the morning. Scribbling away at the homework, I was making a pretty poor attempt of actually correctly solving a good chunk of the problems. “Eh, this is good enough, it’s only based on completion anyway” I would whisper to myself when I stumbled across any remotely difficult question. As dinner wound down, my two-year old cousin wandered into the living room, to explore the unfamiliar territory that was my house. His eyes lighting up at the sight of the decor that was hanging around. He pivoted around the room, and stopped when noticed he was now face to face with these things we know as “stairs”. His little gasp could be heard throughout the living room. Living in a one story apartment, he had never seen anything like this before. So without any caution to the wind, he flung himself towards the steps with no idea what to do. He bounced off the carpet padding of the stairs, landing back where he began at the bottom. I picked him right up off the ground once more, and placed him right in front of the bottom of the first step. I attempted to show him how it was done, gripping both of his hands, we made the ascent to the top of the steps. His face all giddy once he reached stair summit, feeling that he was on top of the world. We made our way back down. Thinking that was the end of it, I went back to my homework, but to my surprise, my cousin wasn’t done just yet. He had a new goal of trying to make it up all by himself. Examining the stairs, trying to figure out a way to launch himself up, he crept his way up the first step while gripping the railing as tight as he could with his little hands, then tried the second, but once again, he didn’t have the power to support himself, and ended up tumbling back down. The thing was, he kept getting up, and kept going. He would take a deep breath and try again. Step after step, fall after fall, my little cousin, who not too long ago, wasn’t able to walk, was now able to climb the colossal column of stairs, all by himself.

If you put your mind to something, no matter how difficult it may seem, you are able to do it with enough practice and effort. After seeing what my little cousin was able to achieve through determination, made me realize that same day with those math problems sitting right beside me, I too could also solve not just some, but all of those problems if I had the same determination as my little cousin did that first time he tried to climb those stairs. So next time I ever run into a tough math problem, my mind will always go back to my little cousin, and his sense of determination.