It's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but...

[aebhel]

My mother home-schooled me through most of elementary school. I was a somewhat intractable student, as far as I remember, mostly because I didn't deal well with frustration. If I understand something quickly, I'm fine; it has been my great good luck to have enough native intelligence that I understand most things quickly. If, on the other hand, I

Comments

[gabrielladusult]

Are you a visual learner? I use cheerios with my kids to demonstrate concepts. It's kind of tedious counting them all out, but the visual representation is sometimes easier to understand than just looking at 'numbers' which are symbols that may not make much sense to you. I mean, 1 is easy because it's one line, and three is kind-of ok because 3 there are three little points -- but it's hard to see eight in 8 for a visual person.

Talley marks, blocks, or anything you can think of that might help you get a hold of things (money is also good, but that's not always easy to come by in larger sums). If you liked higher maths -- use geometry to help you with fractions (instead of vice-versa).

Then again -- my daughter is the same way with reading (if she doesn't sound out a word right the first time, she is reduced to tears), and I'm not much good at helping her, so maybe my teaching advice isn't going to do you much good -- but just keep taking deep breaths and if staring at a problem too long makes it worse, move along and come back (some computer-based exams don't allow you to go back to skipped problems, so figure that out before you practice that method too much -- but it really is the best solution when you're stuck).

[aebhel]

Thanks, I'll try that...

Yeah, the GRE is computer based, and you can't skip around at all. I know I'll ace the verbal part of it, but doing math problems when I can't come back to them later...ugh.

I have a friend who's good at math. She'll gloat, but I might ask her to tutor me. I think if I can watch someone work the problems out in front of me, I might be able to get it. I hope.

This is why I signed up for a test in November. Plenty of time to get the tears and tantrums out of the way now...