I saw this shirt yesterday that said "God created Calculus to make smart people feel dumb." This shirt might be funny, but it seems to be so true. Something about the Differentiation and finding dy/dx just don't seem to stick into my head. There are always tons of things you have to remember in math. They all build on one another. It's always been so easy for me, and now I'm starting to realize how people feel when they don't understand and it takes more than a few tries to grasp the concept. As I sit here and type I begin to wonder if I can really do all of this. If I will be able to handle Calculus one, two, and beyond in college.
Part of being a high school student is finding the tools and building the framework to help live the rest of your life. The whole point of high school is taking things slow to grasp the understanding so when you have to use it later on you are able to remember and perform quickly. It's frustrating while you're here learning, but at the end of the day it all seems worth the struggle. Everyone must remember that when you are frustrated it means that you want to succeed and will do anything for that success. We have to become patient with ourselves and our classmates so we can all learn and build our toolbox for life.
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I had a similar experience with respect to calc. I started out at Bucknell in the engineering department and had a heck of a time. My professor was named a Eastern Europeon dude name Uelli Daepp and through he spoke english well, the combination of the Calc. III language and the accent made it seem like I was listening to a completely foriegn language.
ReplyDeleteMy only advice? Develop your Sfumato.
Sfumato is a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty. Leonardo’s phenomenal ability to hold the tension of opposites, to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox, was a critical characteristic of his genius.
Here are two ways to apply Sfumato:
Make friends with ambiguity
List some situations from your life where ambiguity reigns (e.g. waiting to hear if you were accepted at the college of your choice) and describe the feeling.
Cultivate confusion endurance
Sharpen your senses in the face of paradox. You can do it by asking questions like “How are my strengths and weaknesses related?” or “What is the relationships between my saddest moments and the most joyful ones?”
(This Sfumato Sfumato Idea is from a guy name Leonardo DaVinci)
Wanna know what could make make your high school experience just a tad bit worse?
ReplyDelete...Being stalked by Jaws. O_o