This course fulfilled the Quantitative Reasoning Pillar requirement. Its focus was on teaching students the ins and outs of personal finance and the importance of that knowledge. Throughout the course, students became familiar with concepts like simple and compound interest as well as mortgages and loans. We also covered content on probability. While tests were used to gage our understanding of the materials taught in class, another form of assessing our knowledge was through papers written on the topics of financial concepts. These papers could be done in small groups and allowed students to collaborate together and further discuss how the financial topics we learned in class could be integrated into real life scenarios.

Click Here! MATH 135 Writing #1

Stella Morris, Spring 2019: Above is one of the financial concept papers that I collaborated on with another student from my class. In this paper, my classmate and I explain the importance of investing early for retirement by giving several examples to prove our point.

Reflection: Out of all the classes I have taken at Longwood University so far, this one has taught me some of the most important lessons I will need to know in order to succeed in the real world. While personal finance may not seem like a particularly riveting course to take, the concepts taught in it can truly change a persons life for the better. Personally, the concepts that I found most interesting to learn about were early retirement investments and compound interest; the topic for my paper above. Prior to this course, I had no idea why early investment was so important to retirement funds. However, now I know that the earlier you start to invest, the more time your money has to grow through compound interest. These concepts are critical to a reasonably comfortable retirement and have encouraged me to start saving as soon as possible.