This year, I have had to push myself to be more open minded and willing to try new approaches to problems. With this problem in particular, I struggled with it quite a bit initially. I was having some trouble relating the costs to the problem. I had to solve the problem by comparing it to similar problems we were given in class, and working from there. I had to be very careful to analyze the question and determine what it was asking, what we were given, and how to relate the variables in an effective way. I also had to be flexible when my initial method wasn’t working. I was trying to solve it by incorporating trig, but when it was clear that wouldn’t be successful I changed my approach. One thing I would like to improve on to grow my problem solving abilities is my patience. Sometimes when I am working on a tricky problem I can get overwhelmed or frustrated when I can’t solve it, and this can be a hinderance.