(no subject)
Wednesdays are turning out to be brutal days for me. On Wednesdays, I have calculus from noon-2pm, organic chemistry from 2-4pm, and then a one hour calculus tutorial from 4-5pm. By the end of the day, I just feel like crying, and my brain is numb. The problem is, the courses are so fast paced that I don't have time to absorb anything that I am copying down, and I feel completely lost and overwhelmed.
I understand, for the most part, the concepts in calculus, but half the time, I don't understand what the hell the teacher is writing, and there are several WTF?s scribbled in my notes. Once I have a moment to look over my notes at my own pace, and think about each step, and after clarifying things with the math TA in the math lab, then I'm OK. But while in class, the pace is so fast and I don't have a moment to even process what the hell has been explained, so I become even more and more lost. Math is a language on its own, and today, I discovered that a major problem for me in calculus is that I do not know how to translate from English to Math. Having a bunch of equations, mathematical symbols and notation, and badly drawn diagrams does not help if I don't know what they mean. Today in the math tutorial, after asking the TA about a relatively simple concept, I was finally able to understand something, after the TA explained it in words. Had my math teacher simply written down a few sentences in English instead of only drawing complicated and messy diagrams, I would have understood. My math teacher is a good math teacher, but I'm just slow.
My organic chem teacher, however, is not the best teacher. The problem is that he's been teaching organic chem for over a decade and knows the material inside and out, that he doesn't understand that not everyone understands the material right away. I don't know about other people, but I need to think about what I have just learned, and we're always so rushed in class. Also, his notes suck. He has them pre-written on his computer, which he projects onto a screen, and uses them year after year, so that he doesn't have to recopy them every semester, which makes sense. But, they aren't detailed enough to give a good understanding of what is going on. I don't mind reading the text book to supplement my notes, but his notes are really confusing.
So on Wednesdays, I feel so dazed. I come out of calculus, feeling like I'm going to cry because I am so overwhelmed, and then in chemistry, my brain gets bombarded with more information that I don't have time to process. I feel like such a retard, and I'm sure that my classmates think I'm stupid. Thank goodness that biochem, so far, is easy. My biochem teacher is not very organized or efficient, and each class, we don't learn a lot of new material (the pace is even a little slow for me). So there is never a lot of material to review (and the material is simple anyway), so I can't imagine that there will be too much on our test that is coming up in two weeks.
I understand, for the most part, the concepts in calculus, but half the time, I don't understand what the hell the teacher is writing, and there are several WTF?s scribbled in my notes. Once I have a moment to look over my notes at my own pace, and think about each step, and after clarifying things with the math TA in the math lab, then I'm OK. But while in class, the pace is so fast and I don't have a moment to even process what the hell has been explained, so I become even more and more lost. Math is a language on its own, and today, I discovered that a major problem for me in calculus is that I do not know how to translate from English to Math. Having a bunch of equations, mathematical symbols and notation, and badly drawn diagrams does not help if I don't know what they mean. Today in the math tutorial, after asking the TA about a relatively simple concept, I was finally able to understand something, after the TA explained it in words. Had my math teacher simply written down a few sentences in English instead of only drawing complicated and messy diagrams, I would have understood. My math teacher is a good math teacher, but I'm just slow.
My organic chem teacher, however, is not the best teacher. The problem is that he's been teaching organic chem for over a decade and knows the material inside and out, that he doesn't understand that not everyone understands the material right away. I don't know about other people, but I need to think about what I have just learned, and we're always so rushed in class. Also, his notes suck. He has them pre-written on his computer, which he projects onto a screen, and uses them year after year, so that he doesn't have to recopy them every semester, which makes sense. But, they aren't detailed enough to give a good understanding of what is going on. I don't mind reading the text book to supplement my notes, but his notes are really confusing.
So on Wednesdays, I feel so dazed. I come out of calculus, feeling like I'm going to cry because I am so overwhelmed, and then in chemistry, my brain gets bombarded with more information that I don't have time to process. I feel like such a retard, and I'm sure that my classmates think I'm stupid. Thank goodness that biochem, so far, is easy. My biochem teacher is not very organized or efficient, and each class, we don't learn a lot of new material (the pace is even a little slow for me). So there is never a lot of material to review (and the material is simple anyway), so I can't imagine that there will be too much on our test that is coming up in two weeks.