Hi, my internet name is ceres, and I am terrible (TERRIBLE!) at math. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?
I am going back to school in January. Again. For Biology. Again. Biology was my first love, before Japanese or whatever other craziness I got myself involved with... before anyone on this part of the internets knew I existed. I still love it. I'm good at it. I was going to fail Chemistry II because even with tutoring I couldn't hack the math, so I withdrew and stopped taking bio courses and eventually just quit. I went on to get my "consolation" degree in Japanese, but it's not good enough, and I'm not happy with my prospects or really, the degree. I never should have quit the thing I love doing, and it's time to rectify that.
Now, I have a pretty strict schedule for this degree. Everything needs to be done in about a year and a half, so I'll be attending full-time including summers. The first term has me jumping off at the deep end with my once-failed ChemII course (complete with the same terrible teacher from 8 years ago, talk about facing your demons here, lousy tenure) and College Trig.
Math much above, say,
fractions has always been a struggle for me. I look at the page and see clouds of letters and numbers that I can't pick apart into sense. I've always felt that way.. that whatever I was looking at on the page was just too big for me. I am not unintelligent; it is quite probably a confidence issue, and I recognize that, but I'm not really sure how to rectify it.
I have to beat this, and I'm convinced that I
can, but I have no idea how to go about it, and these classes are scary. Does anyone have this? Have you beaten it? How do you study for math? I don't have any trouble memorizing formulae and what they're for, but application comes painfully or not at all.
Any advice not consisting of "quit" is welcome, because really, I need it.
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The only thing I remember about Trig is that I barely passed it in high school, so I can't help you there.
That said, algebra is all about balancing. A good book and teacher can make or break you.
For example I'm sure you'd know what to do with this:
5x+7 = 52
But as soon as you do this:
5x+7y = 52
People get just lost. But all it is is just the same thing with a twist.
What are your weaknesses in math, really? Is it just the letter, is it multitudes of letters in a polynomial? Or is it just the overall idea of algebra and balancing in general?
It helps. I still suck and I am still dyslexic. But somewhat less so, and a bit more confident in my math skills.
Enter university. I took Geological Sciences and if you don't have A level maths they bring you up to speed with compulsory maths courses applied to my subject. For example, in the past someone would have given me a simultaenous equation, and I would have had no idea what to do. However, what they did was give me a simultaenous equation, a few worked examples, and applied it to the formation of phenocrysts in a magma chamber, rate of cooling or something.
My lecturer made it very clear she didn't consider herself a mathmatician. She emphasised that you need to practice equations over and over until they 'click' in your head. I just could never remember the order in which I go to work stuff out, the exceptions to the rule, etc. I had other help, too; my roommate was doing a Maths degree and she tried her best (she went a bit too quickly sometimes though) and I had a good friend who had done A level maths, and was very patient with me as I asked to go over them again. I found just doing example problems over and over was the way to get over it, and I managed to pass this way, just shy of 70%.
Pages of figures, equations or anything like that scares me as well. I used to cover up the rest of the page and just focus on the one problem for starters, only letting myself go through it bite-size so I didn't get overwhelmed.
Good luck and don't give up! I did it and I'm sure you can too.
A tutor is pretty much second on the to-do list, after 'trying the problems myself'. It doesn't really help that it's been a long time since I did anything other than basic arithmetic.
You definitely lose me at 5x+7y. I can think of all different ways to manipulate that equation, but none of them seem to solve it. This might be a long semester. It seems that practice problems over and over with a tutor might be the only way to fix it.
Also, you might try picking up an MCAT book. I know it sounds weird, but they really do a good job of explaining concepts clearly and concisely (I believe mine was published by Kaplan). Some of the organic chemistry concepts and problems became really clear to me later when I studied for the MCAT.
Don't worry about solving that equation, the best you would be able to do is express one of the variables in terms of the other. Unless it comes naturally to you, there really is no other way to learn math other than by doing a truckload of problems over and over again. I would really concentrate on finding a good tutor before trying to work it out yourself though. A book will definitely not be able to answer many of the questions you will probably have, and if you don't understand why you're doing something that the book tells you to, chances are you won't remember how to do it in a high stress environment.
And what do you mean when you say that you don't have trouble memorizing equations but find difficulty in applying them? Are you having problems choosing what to plug in where, or in the actual solving of the math itself?
I'll check out the MCAT book.. it's probably worth a try.
mooshoe, it's the prospects, mainly, and the fact that while I loved (and still love! although I am terribly rusty) learning the language, I can't really see myself doing any sort of translation or interpretation work. Plus, there's none of that in my area for anything except Spanish. And Spanish might be about as far from Japanese as you can get.
On some level though, I really want to finish what I started. Turning my back on this particular passion has never really felt like the good or right thing.. I just.. gave up.
In order to not give up this time, I have to get through lots of math. :P