Mech. Engineering student struggling with Calculus
However you could not have tried all of the subjects
Accounting
Trades:. Carpentry, construction, electrician
Take fewer units (do not know if GI bill allows it)
What branch were you in?
What was your military occupational specialty?
Maybe major in a subject related to MOS
What part of ASVAB did you score high on?
When I was 19, a career personality test matched my personality to 20 jobs. All of them in physics and engineering
The easiest, civil engineer
UCSD, structural engineering. Had a f**k load of a hard time
Gained 15 pounds in one quarter, stressing out
Academic probation, five quarters
Nightmare
A fifth year electrical engineering undergrad told me that if she were to have spent as much time as me, studying, she would have gotten straight A's
Got to Structural engineering 110b:. Solid Mechanics. "D"
In that school if you fail one class ("d" or " f")
You have to wait till the next year to take it again
In the meantime, all the other courses you were scheduled to take, has the course you flunked, as a prerequisite
Hire a professional tutor
Took the first two calculus classes, each 2x
The fifth one, three times and flunked
Emotional rollercoaster
Ritalin
Join American Society of Mechanical Engineers. See if your college has it
Meet upperclassmen
Get their old finals
Some schools have academic probation and impacted majors
Majors outside STEM require less homework (according to the school).
You wrote that you are not interested in any other subject, but social sciences and humanities involve a lot less work than mechanical engineering
And if the school Expelled you for academic probation (my situation) , you have nothing but sunk costs. Time, money and energy wasted.
That was when I was 22. Tried and failed to commit suicide over it (same explanation as you, but I am just civilian)
Now I am 35 years old and obsessive over it
Every single f*****g day
Now I have a fear of failure and too lazy to do anything
Every situation is different
In some cases, persistence
In some cases, quit and do something else
It's splitting fine hairs
But seriously
Stress, strain, pressure, tension, compression, force
In summer school,
Statics
Five weeks long
Monday to Friday
Three hours class a day
Week three, midterm one
Week four , midterm two
Week five, final
No TA
Instructor had official office hours, but I went and he barked at me so loud he scared me away
One student purchased the solution manual
The teaching assistant went over a problem with me
I asked if I could keep the paper
He said no and threw it away
And then I dug it out of the garbage
f**k structural engineering
No of course I haven't tried all of the subjects, but it's the only subject i'm interested in studying. I contemplated Criminal Justice, Numerous medical programs, a few trade schools for mechanics, but they all seem to be more of a passing interest than an actual interest. Mechanical Engineering is always what I've been interested in since I was a kid, and for me anyways it feels right.
I was in the Army as an Infantryman in the 75th Ranger Regiment, which is a prestigious unit, but there isn't really anything I can do with Infantry skills as a civilian unless I do contracting work overseas again, or work for some kind of security company. That isn't really in my best interest though due to some of the injuries I sustained while I served. As far as I'm aware I can take as many or as few classes as I want under the G.I. Bill, the onmly limit is that I only have 36 months of benefits regardless of the number of credits I'm taking. So it's always in my best interest to be full time, at least to maximize my benefit. On the Asvab I did well across the board really, but the GT score, or general technical knowledge was definitely where I shined.
Regarding everything else, I feel you there. It's incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to spend literally your entire day studying a subject and not making any progress towards solving a single problem. Of course, on top of dealing with those frustrations I'm also dealing with various anger and depressiomn issues related to PTSD and such so it's a great time LOL. I'm gonna start looking into a more private tutor as opposed to the tutors at the school since they usually have 2-3 people to help at a time. I'm at a Community College for now, with plans to transfer if/when I make it through the program here. I'm on my 3rd year, but starting so far behind in the math courses is ultimately whay has been holding me up. I may look into the Civil Engineering path, as structures are interesting to me as well, but my true interest lies in designing and optimizing vehicles be it cars, aircraft, whatever.
Well, that is what calculus is all about. When you want to optimize something you usually want to maximize or minimize something. If you can express something mathematically, you use calculus to find that.
Even more powerful is the use of theorems, to establish "ground rules" on what can and can't be done. No sense wasting valuable time and effort on something that obviously can't be done.
Computer simulations are nice, but too much reliance on them means you are just guessing. It is better to have a firm mathematical and physics based background so you have a better understanding of how close you are to what can be achieved.
Pretty much everything gives me trouble if I’m being honest. I was able to occasionally do some basic limits and derivatives last semester but that’s about it. I don’t seem to be able to retain anything number related whether it’s complex stuff or basic dates. Any time a fraction is introduced, or letters (especially Greek letters) I get completely lost.
Do you understand the concept of slope when it comes to linear equations (y = mx + c)? If so, it may be helpful to just view differentiation as a generalisation of this principle. The derivative of a function is basically just its slope at any given point, assuming that it's perfectly linear at that point. Once you've mastered differential calculus, integral calculus comes at once.
I don't understand why you'd be using Greek letters for elementary calculus, with the possible exception of theta (θ), but maybe it would help to learn the Greek alphabet by heart? You don't seem to have impaired linguistic ability, so this shouldn't be a problem. It helps to emphasize the fact that letters simply serve as placeholders in mathematics. Maybe revisiting the elements of algebra would help with this (things like solving 3x + 2 = 17 for x). Fractions, of course, are just division and should be viewed as such.
It might help if you presented one of your calculus problems to us, from a textbook, along with your attempts at an answer; we might then get a better idea as to where you're going wrong.
I understand that slope measures the rise/run on a graph but im not sure what else that means exactly. I know we have used greek letters for summation, theta is obviously used, and in Physics we use quite a bit of greek letters in various equations. For the most part I understand what the summation is asking for, but when there are other letters and numbers placed ontop or below thats when things go haywire because there are so many letters and numbers to keep track of.
Basic linear stuff like solving for x I'm usually okay with, but again when there are frctions or radicals my knowledge of what to donext dissipates. I have a packet I'm currently attempting to work on in preparation for an exam in the morning tomorrow so I'll try to get a photo uploaded here after breakfast.
The concept of slope is useful because it tells you how quantities change; it's difficult to see this on a graph of y against x, because there's no physically useful interpretation, but it becomes apparent when talking about distance (usually x) against time (usually t). For instance, everybody knows that speed is distance divided by time (miles per hour, metres per second, etc.) And this is easy to read off a linear graph of distance against time (x = mt + c), where speed is just the slope of the graph or m (change in distance over change in time), but when you have a nonlinear function of time (for instance, x = mt²), it's impossible to just divide change in distance by change in time because there is no one answer, but rather, we must "zoom in" to the graph until we get to a point where it is approximately a straight line - at this point, the same way of talking about speed as for a linear graph applies. This is one of the immediate uses of the derivative, which is a technical way of talking about "zooming in" to a graph. The derivative of mt² with respect to t is 2mt, so that we now have a function which will tell us the speed of the particle with the trajectory x = mt² at any point in time.
As for summation, just worry about one thing at a time: the most important part of the summation notation is the expression right of the sigma sign (Σ); given an expression like (a trivial example) Σn² with 3 above the sign and 1 below it, just focus on one term at a time. We start with 1, so work that out (1² = 1), writing it down if necessary, then check the indices around sigma again (2² = 4) and it's not too difficult, if you don't worry about other information unnecessarily, to get the answer (14).
Good learning material will explain what the greek letters actually mean (constant, variable, proportion, formula), there's no question about what pi means, but some of the others can mean different things.
You've said that fractions and ratios throw you off, maybe you should single that area out. Is it confusing when variables with exponents are in those ratios?
I don't know how much time you spent on khan academy, but they do a good job of separating out the different topics to help you hone in on what you need to learn. I finally got familiar with logarithms (that one really threw me off for the longest time). I'm more of a repetition/hands on learner, I just have to invest time and be patient with myself.
I don't want to make assumptions for you, but I think if you do the practice section on khan academy and try to get 80-100% proficiency on algebra and calculus, you'll get the material a lot better. The site tracks your progress for you, and they mix visual (graph) learning with the algebra based learning, I just can't think of a better place to learn that level of math.
Brilliant.org is a paid site, they teach multivariable calc (among other things), it looks promising and I'm going to try it for myself when I'm done brushing up with khan academy.
If you show an example of what problems you are dealing with, a lot of us would be more than happy to help you with it.
I had issues when I was in school too, difficulty focusing and unwanted memories that kept coming up, maybe that's more to blame than anything else.
_________________
I'm a math evangelist, I believe in theorems and ignore the proofs.
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