I want to give a heartfelt thank you to Sal Khan and the entire team at Khan Academy. Last week, I finally achieved a goal I’ve been working toward for the past 6.5 years: finishing the entire Math: High School & College section of Khan Academy. In many ways, this has been a life-changing experience for me, so I wanted to say THANK YOU and share my story.

I started using Khan Academy back in September of 2019. Living on my own at the time, I was going through a difficult period of my life feeling lost and directionless. I was working a physically demanding job and concerned that I might not be able to continue doing it long term. A friend of mine suggested that if I “learned calculus” I might be able to get a job in finance. I found your website and was floored by the quantity and quality of your content — all offered for free! 😳 I then decided to commit 5–10 hours per week to studying math and would finish each week by writing a blog post summarizing what I learned.

Studying math quickly became an integral (pun intended) part of my daily routine. After a few months, I’d made it through Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. I was CERTAIN that I’d learn calculus in no time! Then came Trigonometry… For some reason, I could NOT wrap my head around the unit circle. After a few weeks, it got to the point where I started wondering if I was smart enough to learn this type of math. Just as I was about to give up, something clicked and all of a sudden the connection between the unit circle and a sine wave became completely clear! As I continued studying math, I would always think back to this moment whenever I got stuck on a difficult concept and remind myself that if I kept working at it, eventually things would start to make sense.

As time went on, my goal shifted from simply “learning calculus” to finishing the entire Math: High School & College section of Khan Academy. Although it took me longer than I expected, I’m proud to say that last week I passed the Calculus BC Course Challenge with a 100% score, which was the final thing I had left to do. 🥳

This experience has given me much more than a better understanding of mathematics. Over the past 349 weeks, studying math became an important part of my morning routine, giving my life structure, consistency, and direction. More importantly, it completely changed the way I viewed myself and my ability to learn difficult things. It also had a domino effect that played a major role in helping me become a healthier, more disciplined, and more confident version of myself. For that, I am deeply grateful.

Once again, thank you to everyone at Khan Academy for creating such an incredible resource and making it freely available to people around the world!

(P.S. my Khan Academy journey isn’t over yet! I’ve now started working through the Computing section of KA and am excited to see where it leads.)