I've often heard people say that the most effective angle to park at is a 45 degree angle. To get an idea of this angle, I hold my right or left hand out straight ahead and point my other hand out toward the curb I'm parking next to. So I form a right angle. Then I try to visualize half of the angle formed with my arms. When my front bumper hits the 45 degree angle, I start to straighten the wheels. If you can master this, half of a right angled turn, then you won't be the person who repeatedly readjusts your car for 10 minutes while holding up the traffic on the street. Now that I've started to drive, I need to remember that because I won't always be able to park in a parking spot straight ahead of me.

I also want to practice my percentages with the bill that comes at the end of dinner. My father always tries to leave a tip and so I enjoy being a conversion factor calculator. I would like to help my dad out more, especially when the amount of the bill from dinner comes to a total of a very odd number. For example, the other day our bill amount for 3 people came to $63.4 (or something close to it) and my dad wanted to give a 15% tip. The tip amount came out to about $9.56. The formula is: tip amount = bill total x tip percent. It might have been because it was late, and the restaurant was noisy, but it took me a long and tedious time to figure out the percent tip in dollars. Or maybe those are just my poor excuses.

I would love to become faster at converting percentages and other numbers in my head. Since I'm studying geometry, I would like to be able to visualize angles in my head with precision.

I had forgotten about slope, seeing that we studied it in 8th grade and I am amazed how it has made a resurgence in our 10th grade math class.
Slope is rise/run or in other words; vertical distance/ horizontal distance.
Similarly, grade is used interchangeably with slope. Grade is where 0 is the gravitational level or flat surface and anything higher creates an upward path. Therefore, the higher grade percentage, the steeper the slope. The equation for grade is %grade = 100xrise/run.
Now tangent is equal to the ratio of the vertical side to the horizontal side or opposite side/ adjacent side which is very to the equation for slope. When you try to find the slope of line, you seam to be making a triangle with the part of the line as the hypotenuse. Therefore, the trig function is the tangent of an angle = rise/run.

I like to incorporate slope or grade into my life in two ways:  In a love/hate relationship and as an encouraging idea .

Two years ago, while I was a member of the Durango Ski Team, we had dry land training for an hour on Saturday morning and then ski practice for six hours after that. The dry land training consisted of weights and running. It was hard enough to run in Albuquerque, but when you add more elevation and cold weather to the workout, it's miserable. So while running up the gravel path that runs adjacent to the ski slope, I despised the incline.  However, within the next hour, I was on the ski slope, bombing down the hill and grateful for such a steep slope that allowed for me to gain speed. Similarly, I was glad that the chairlifts ascended almost to the sky, allowing for a greater decline down the hill.

Last year, Mr. Smith asked us during common time (something like) "are you willing to put all your effort into your studies just to end up not doing well? Because if you do put effort and that ends up being the case, at least you know you tried." Every time since then, when I've paused in the middle of studying history to ask myself "why are you doing this?" I try to remember Mr. Smith's words. Sometimes, I'm just going to have to trek it up that steep hill, only to be disappointed. But in the end, its knowing that you made it up the slope and that you're that much closer to the top of the mountain. In my mind, the slope keeps growing with more effort you put in, because developing the correct study habits and doing the work gets you father than just skimming along the flat, 0 grade, surface.