Those that are smarter than everyone and those that work harder than everyone. “There’s two kinds of mathematicians in the world. Taking calculus one and two made her feel the weight of her undiagnosed dyscalculia–given that she went to every office hour and put in the work to understand something that wasn’t being taught to her in the right way. These were the classes that Dylan really struggled with, but she decided to pursue them regardless. In order to get a statistics degree, you have to take more math classes. However, the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of statistics as a career. Her classes weren’t really resonating with her and after deciding to change her major, she told herself she was going to study “literally anything but math”. She remembers telling her statistics teacher then that she “might be a statistician someday”.ĭylan was always interested in people and their stories, so in College, she decided to major in political science. It had visuals which helped Dylan because she was always interested in visual arts like painting, drawing, and sculpture. She liked that it was applied and had stories along with the numbers. It was the first time that she ever enjoyed a math class. She was told that she had to put in more effort and work harder.ĭylan took AP statistics her senior year. Later in high school, she was met with similar attitudes toward her struggle with math. She also struggled with multiplication above 7 but was able to put in the effort and get by. She got to fractions in the fourth grade and felt like, “a ton of bricks hit me and I was struggling.” Looking back now, Dylan recalls that she wasn’t able to read an analog clock and couldn’t make sense of maps. She skated by because most people would say things like “Math is hard” or “Math just isn’t your thing”. As you continue doing this, I think you will find that desire to be confident in the material will overtake anxiety as the motive force for your studying.Dylan was top of her class in just about everything except for math. If you continue building the habit of consistently filling all the holes you find in your knowledge, you will develop confidence that you thoroughly understand all of the material presented in class. ![]() Stay committed to your this approach to learning. You started this practice motivated by your desire to stay competitive for an academic position in the future. Consistently doing this both in and out of class is the key to truly learning from the course. ![]() That is why people make mistakes or form misconceptions.īy staying after and carefully considering every mistake and misconception, you are rebuilding what was lost when the knowledge was first communicated. There is always something lost in this process. Keep doing what you are doing! Knowledge cannot be directly transmitted from your teacher's head to yours it must be translated into a communication medium such as words or pictures. I want to add that your reaction to it extremely positive. Henry is completely right that what your struggle is normal. Neither the fact that you breezed through calc 1, nor the fact that you're struggling a bit more in calc 2, is a particularly strong indicator, especially since calc BC is very unlike the sort of math professors do. To answer your second question, we have no information about your chances of working at a university later. I bring this up because one thing you should expect while you learn calc 2 is to have to revisit things you think you were done with and realize new things about them. Learning math is a cyclical process, where you learn concepts, use them as a basis to learn additional concepts, and then return to the old concepts and learn more about them in light of what you now know. That's not a criticism it's basically impossible to fully understand the concepts of calculus 1 when you've just taken it. ![]() Relatedly, you almost certainly don't understand the concepts of calc 1. Indeed, it's an essential part of learning, because everyone eventually hits a point where they struggle, and learning how to deal with is an important skill. Struggling with material is a normal part of learning. A lot of students seem to make it through high school and well into college with the idea that school is supposed to be easy, and that having to work hard, or being confused at times, or struggling with some topics means that something has gone wrong.
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