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For whatever reason, I hit a poor grades stretch in math for my first three years of high school. It was just boring, and high school had distractions. My sch

For whatever reason, I hit a poor grades stretch in math for my first three years of high school. It was just boring, and high school had distractions. My school almost blocked me from taking calculus. When I hit Calculus, I had my "Aha, I get it now" moment, and had great grades in math ever since. Some students don't need to be motivated to work hard. Others do. Some in the latter camp are led to believe that they're not good at math, when the reality is that they're just not motivated for it. I'm glad that I ultimately found my motivation. The OP seems to have found this moment too.

FLUX-YOU 13y ago
>Some students don't need to be motivated to work hard. Others do. Some in the latter camp are led to believe that they're not good at math, when the reality is that they're just not motivated for it. I'm glad that I ultimately found my motivation. Approaching it without other academic pressures and plenty of confidence from being successful in other areas also helps. Plus the article gave no hint that he was taking a full schedule. Personally, I would likely get bad math grades if I had to go back and study math and other things. Perhaps for these students that "didn't get" or were "bad at" math, maybe they just need to be given some time to only focus on math to raise their confidence and abilities. I had similar results as the author when all I was doing was working and doing some math during the day. I also barely graduated high school.
- bglazer 13y ago
  I'm currently going back and learning linear algebra from the excellent MIT OCW course [1]. I somehow didn't have to learn linear in the course of a CS degree at a big state school. Focusing solely on learning this one subject has allowed me to get the subject at a much deeper level than learning enough to pass a test. I'm hoping to move on to statistics, which I slept through because I was an immature shit-head my sophomore year. Then a review multivariable and diff-eq, and the end goal is to do the full Stanford Machine Learning class, taught by Andrew Ng [2]. I also really want to tackle "Underactuated Robotics", which is another MIT OCW course.[3] [1] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebra-fall-2011/Syllabus/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebr... [2] http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1 http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a... [3] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-832-underactuated-robotics-spring-2009/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
  - mathattack 13y ago
    It's amazing how motivation increases once you know what it's useful for. :-)

FLUX-YOU 13y ago

>Some students don't need to be motivated to work hard. Others do. Some in the latter camp are led to believe that they're not good at math, when the reality is that they're just not motivated for it. I'm glad that I ultimately found my motivation. Approaching it without other academic pressures and plenty of confidence from being successful in other areas also helps. Plus the article gave no hint that he was taking a full schedule. Personally, I would likely get bad math grades if I had to go back and study math and other things. Perhaps for these students that "didn't get" or were "bad at" math, maybe they just need to be given some time to only focus on math to raise their confidence and abilities. I had similar results as the author when all I was doing was working and doing some math during the day. I also barely graduated high school.

bglazer 13y ago
I'm currently going back and learning linear algebra from the excellent MIT OCW course [1]. I somehow didn't have to learn linear in the course of a CS degree at a big state school. Focusing solely on learning this one subject has allowed me to get the subject at a much deeper level than learning enough to pass a test. I'm hoping to move on to statistics, which I slept through because I was an immature shit-head my sophomore year. Then a review multivariable and diff-eq, and the end goal is to do the full Stanford Machine Learning class, taught by Andrew Ng [2]. I also really want to tackle "Underactuated Robotics", which is another MIT OCW course.[3] [1] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebra-fall-2011/Syllabus/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear-algebr... [2] http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1 http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a... [3] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-832-underactuated-robotics-spring-2009/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
- mathattack 13y ago
  It's amazing how motivation increases once you know what it's useful for. :-)