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help... majors other than engineering stuff?

A

alphatarget1

Diamond Member
it's the 4th week of school and i flunked 2 tests already. one physics and one math. dropping the class means i'll have to spend more time and money to stay in school so that's not an option. physics i just made stupid mistakes that i shouldn't have and i'll work on that but math... ugh! I understood the techniques but i still suck at it. my book doesn't explain it well and my professor confuses me...

i have been debating if i should change my major to something else other than civil engineering... but i honestly don't know what to do... if i'm struggling right now i can't imagine taking upper division engineering classes

🙁
 
integrals are easy. It's derivatives that are hard because you have to learn them first.


simple integrals are just

x^n+1
----------
n+1


It get's quite complicated though.



THe key:

USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY>
 
Ask yourself this. "Do you want to spend 4-5 years of your prime doing something you can barely do, so you can spend the rest of your life doing something you hate?"
 
Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Ask yourself this. "Do you want to spend 4-5 years of your prime doing something you can barely do, so you can spend the rest of your life doing something you hate?"
Click to expand...

yes i have been asking myself this... I mean I've always liked building stuff and I was pretty good at math. i slept in HS physics and got a B+ and now i'm facing failure... it's just something i never really faced. well i did fail to get chicks a couple of times but that's a different story. I don't even know what i want.

i understand the concepts and stuff. I'm just not very good at getting them right, as in i make a lot of stupid mistakes that i shouldn't have. maybe that's me... You probably don't want to be driving on a bridge that i build. I just lost self confidence after these 2 tests. I have been telling myself i need to suck it up and learn it but is that what i really want? i don't know... i can't answer that and i hope someone could.
 
Originally posted by: alphatarget1
Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Ask yourself this. "Do you want to spend 4-5 years of your prime doing something you can barely do, so you can spend the rest of your life doing something you hate?"
Click to expand...

yes i have been asking myself this... I mean I've always liked building stuff and I was pretty good at math. i slept in HS physics and got a B+ and now i'm facing failure... it's just something i never really faced. well i did fail to get chicks a couple of times but that's a different story. I don't even know what i want.

i understand the concepts and stuff. I'm just not very good at getting them right, as in i make a lot of stupid mistakes that i shouldn't have. maybe that's me... You probably don't want to be driving on a bridge that i build. I just lost self confidence after these 2 tests. I have been telling myself i need to suck it up and learn it but is that what i really want? i don't know... i can't answer that and i hope someone could.
Click to expand...

Personally I hate Calculus but this is my last semester of it and then I can get in to the more enjoyable classes of my major.
 
I'm a history major...it's fun, easy, and very interesting. Of course, your major should really focus on what you want to do after you get out of college, if it's hard, work at it. That's the only way.
 
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
integrals are easy. It's derivatives that are hard because you have to learn them first.


simple integrals are just

x^n+1
----------
n+1


It get's quite complicated though.



THe key:

USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY> USE SUBSTITUTION. LEARN IT FLAWLESSLY>
Click to expand...


I think you should learn substitution, I hear it helps.
 
Originally posted by: alphatarget1
it's the 4th week of school and i flunked 2 tests already. one physics and one math. dropping the class means i'll have to spend more time and money to stay in school so that's not an option. physics i just made stupid mistakes that i shouldn't have and i'll work on that but math... ugh! I understood the techniques but i still suck at it. my book doesn't explain it well and my professor confuses me...

i have been debating if i should change my major to something else other than civil engineering... but i honestly don't know what to do... if i'm struggling right now i can't imagine taking upper division engineering classes

🙁
Click to expand...

Just work and study harder. I was kind of like you... doing bad in my math courses (understood the concepts, but just never practiced/studied). Study enough to get by. I'm now getting my masters in electrical engineering, so it's possible to struggle in the beginning and then pull through!
 
Originally posted by: alphatarget1
Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Ask yourself this. "Do you want to spend 4-5 years of your prime doing something you can barely do, so you can spend the rest of your life doing something you hate?"
Click to expand...

yes i have been asking myself this... I mean I've always liked building stuff and I was pretty good at math. i slept in HS physics and got a B+ and now i'm facing failure... it's just something i never really faced. well i did fail to get chicks a couple of times but that's a different story. I don't even know what i want.

i understand the concepts and stuff. I'm just not very good at getting them right, as in i make a lot of stupid mistakes that i shouldn't have. maybe that's me... You probably don't want to be driving on a bridge that i build. I just lost self confidence after these 2 tests. I have been telling myself i need to suck it up and learn it but is that what i really want? i don't know... i can't answer that and i hope someone could.
Click to expand...

I decided before this semester started to try majoring in geosystems engineering. I discovered that despite being a genius, I CAN'T DO PHYSICS. I can't do calculus either actually. Well I dropped physics and am taking mountain geoecology now. I think I'm going to major in geography. Lots of career opportunity, I enjoy it, plenty of internships available for students. I don't give a damn if it doesn't pay as much as engineering. You can't take it with you.
 
Originally posted by: her209
If you can figure out the answer to this problem then you can do integrals: 1+1=?
Click to expand...

I will agree that integrals may be this easy...can we say the same for 1st Order Linear ODE's? Or complex integration?
 
do they not have a math lab at your school? my daughter's roommate is a math major (both of her parents are math professors), she works at the math lab tutoring.. that's why they're there, to help people like you.. go.. get them to help you.

 
Originally posted by: AvesPKS
Originally posted by: her209
If you can figure out the answer to this problem then you can do integrals: 1+1=?
Click to expand...

I will agree that integrals may be this easy...can we say the same for 1st Order Linear ODE's? Or complex integration?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, yes
 
changing your major from what you start out in is a pretty normal thing, though.. my husband (started in electrical engineering, finished in architecture) and I (started in computer science finished in econ) both did.. my daughter changed from print journalism to broadcast and will be switching again, to viscom, soon as they make it a major (next semester)..

so.. not liking what you thought you were gonna like when you were still in high school.. is.. normal. if you want to do something different, that's fine.. just have to figure out what you want to DO. hopefully, you'll use better criteria than i did (I switched to what I was passing). make sure you pick something you'll like doing.



 
i totally understand what you mean man. i'm a freshman just starting out at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Computer Engineering. I'm not a genius or anything but I'd say I am pretty bright. This calculus stuff I just plain old suck at. I've done most every homework assignment for the class so far but have not managed to get better than a C on any of the quizzes. I have my first exam on monday so we'll see how that goes. But anyways, i am having the same doubts as you as to whether or not computer engineering is really what i want to do. Besides calculus, i'm taking an intro to elec and compE course which is just horrible. I never realized circuits were this complicated. So many laws and formulas and all this crap. Definitely NOT what i want to do, but college is hopefully a place where i can find out what it is i actually want to do. Hang in there.
 
Don't know about civil engineering, but as a computer engineering major (junior) I can say that I have only used the very basics from my calc classes in any other class, even the upper level engineering ones. I view it more of a filter, it filters out all the people who don't really have what it takes to be an engineer. Becoming an engineer is hard simply because being an engineer requires you to think a different way, and difficult classes like physics and calc help figure out if you really can think like an engineer, even if you never have to do a derivative by hand again.

I'm done with my math requirements now, and I hated ever minute of it. But it's worth sucking it up and doing it to do what you want to do at the end. At least it has been for me.
 
Originally posted by: fitzhue
i totally understand what you mean man. i'm a freshman just starting out at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Computer Engineering. I'm not a genius or anything but I'd say I am pretty bright. This calculus stuff I just plain old suck at. I've done most every homework assignment for the class so far but have not managed to get better than a C on any of the quizzes. I have my first exam on monday so we'll see how that goes. But anyways, i am having the same doubts as you as to whether or not computer engineering is really what i want to do. Besides calculus, i'm taking an intro to elec and compE course which is just horrible. I never realized circuits were this complicated. So many laws and formulas and all this crap. Definitely NOT what i want to do, but college is hopefully a place where i can find out what it is i actually want to do. Hang in there.
Click to expand...

In your intro to EE class, they show you the fundamental you need to solve ciruits. But at the end of them first semester, you will only have to take 5 topics with you from then on:

KVL AND KCL (learn these WILL)
Node and Mesh Analysis (uses the above)
Thevenin Equivalent circuits (DO NOT FORGET THESE!)

Seriously, circuits aren't that complicated. They're actually quite easy because you can always check your work with KVL and KCL at each step of the line. That is unlike calculus where you just have to accept that your answer is correct, you really can't verify it.

I didn't do so well starting off my 1st circuits course. But you just need to Practice, Practice, PRACTICE!! Also, I recommend this as a supplement to your first two circuits courses: Schaum's Outline To Circuit Analysis. It will help you with your circuits because it will walk you through each step.

Stick with it.
 
I just started doing Thevenin and Norton right now. Prof gave a lecture on it two days ago.

Its yet to make sense to me.

I do, however, love Digital Logic!
 
I'm taking Computer Engineering at the university of waterloo.

I'm a strange one in that I actually really like pure math (i.e. discrete math, proofs, number theory, and so on) but I'm not one for calculus as I find that it is taught in the following way:

"Here are a bunch of symbols, and you can manipulate them like this."

As opposed to:

"Here are a bunch of numbers, and they are related to each other in the following ways."

The first one I don't consider to be math, but rather some sort of robotic writing style which happens to be rooted in math. Calculus IS really interesting, but the way it is taught is downright boring and not enlightening at all. Everyone knows that dx/dt = xt is a "differential equation". But who really thinks about the fact that this actually MEANS something? To me, what this equations MEANS is mathematics, not some algorithm for solving it (and getting another equation with a similar lack of meaning).

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent.

- Loved physics in high school, began to hate it in university as it was too broad( i.e. covered a random assortment of topics)
- My circuits teacher in first year didn't speak english which wasn't beneficial to me liking circuits
- I also love digital logic
 
Originally posted by: Alphathree33
I'm taking Computer Engineering at the university of waterloo.

I'm a strange one in that I actually really like pure math (i.e. discrete math, proofs, number theory, and so on) but I'm not one for calculus as I find that it is taught in the following way:

"Here are a bunch of symbols, and you can manipulate them like this."

As opposed to:

"Here are a bunch of numbers, and they are related to each other in the following ways."

The first one I don't consider to be math, but rather some sort of robotic writing style which happens to be rooted in math. Calculus IS really interesting, but the way it is taught is downright boring and not enlightening at all. Everyone knows that dx/dt = xt is a "differential equation". But who really thinks about the fact that this actually MEANS something? To me, what this equations MEANS is mathematics, not some algorithm for solving it (and getting another equation with a similar lack of meaning).

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent.

- Loved physics in high school, began to hate it in university as it was too broad( i.e. covered a random assortment of topics)
- My circuits teacher in first year didn't speak english which wasn't beneficial to me liking circuits
- I also love digital logic
Click to expand...


What year are you in Uof Waterloo in comp eng? I have a few friends that go there for Comp Eng and Comp SCi.,

I'm a second year in Comp Eng at U of Toronto.
 
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