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I'm living through this right now. I'm struggling through pre-calculus, attempting to learn material I was never exposed to in high school, and the main emotion

by estevez 15y ago

I'm living through this right now. I'm struggling through pre-calculus, attempting to learn material I was never exposed to in high school, and the main emotion I'm feeling is profound shame. Luckily, I've had some amazing research experiences so I know I can do the science; that said, I can easily imagine how differently things could have gone if that wasn't the case.

always_finish 15y ago
I lived through that myself and I want to encourage you to keep at it. It can be extremely frustrating and depressing especially if you have talented colleagues. Here is my example in case you can benefit from it. I was studying EE and I had classmates who were able to skip Calc I, Calc II and one guy even clepped out of Differential Equations! Me? I was failing Pre-calc and I had to drop down to College Algebra. I was even failing that, unfortunately. I went to talk to the teacher, who unhelpfully stated, "In my 12 years of teaching I have only had a single student manage to pass considering where you are starting from." That seriously pissed me off. Fortunately, the next test was on exponentials and logorithms, which I just "grok". I got a high A on it. From there I dedicated even more time to the materials and I scoured the library for better math reference books. I found some books that took a practical approach to problem solving and used them to understand the process correctly. In the end I ended up with an 89 for the class. Considering that I had a 60 when I talked with the teacher, I was very proud of it. I ended up having to add a year to my University studies and therefore added an extra major but it worked out well. I graduated with my EE degree and ironically some of the people that were exempted from the Calc series dropped out since the program was "too hard". Change the way you are studying if your struggling. Look for other reference materials, try out a few different tutors. There are different ways to learn things, and you just need to find out how you learn and then you push it for all it's worth.

by estevez 15y ago

always_finish 15y ago

I lived through that myself and I want to encourage you to keep at it. It can be extremely frustrating and depressing especially if you have talented colleagues. Here is my example in case you can benefit from it. I was studying EE and I had classmates who were able to skip Calc I, Calc II and one guy even clepped out of Differential Equations! Me? I was failing Pre-calc and I had to drop down to College Algebra. I was even failing that, unfortunately. I went to talk to the teacher, who unhelpfully stated, "In my 12 years of teaching I have only had a single student manage to pass considering where you are starting from." That seriously pissed me off. Fortunately, the next test was on exponentials and logorithms, which I just "grok". I got a high A on it. From there I dedicated even more time to the materials and I scoured the library for better math reference books. I found some books that took a practical approach to problem solving and used them to understand the process correctly. In the end I ended up with an 89 for the class. Considering that I had a 60 when I talked with the teacher, I was very proud of it. I ended up having to add a year to my University studies and therefore added an extra major but it worked out well. I graduated with my EE degree and ironically some of the people that were exempted from the Calc series dropped out since the program was "too hard". Change the way you are studying if your struggling. Look for other reference materials, try out a few different tutors. There are different ways to learn things, and you just need to find out how you learn and then you push it for all it's worth.