Here's my essay!
---
Ok, where to start? where to start?
Well first things first, I?m having trouble with Intermediate Algebra. Always have. But this is not trouble in the classical sense, as in I?m not able to comprehend certain problems, but that I?m more so either hit or miss with any problem at any given time.
A typical ?cycle? goes like this.
I show up to class, we?re covering variations for example, direct variation, inverse, joint etc. Simple enough. Our professor throws examples and notes up on the board that I completely comprehend and I?m often going to the next step in my head just to see if I can figure out where this is leading us, and I often I get it right. Seems logical to go from A to B to C to get the answer in my head, and more often than not that?s how math problems are solved (as far as I know) and that?s how it goes down in class with me practically figuring out how to solve these examples before the professor shows us fully.
I take notes in class along with everyone else as a sort of rote memorization tool even though this seems like extremely easy algebra to me at the time.
After class I?ll go to the library or home and go over what we did in class and I can figure out all the problems extremely easy. I think to myself ?yep, just as I suspected, the process of solving these problems did not change during the drive home? and I finish up.
I?ll wake up the next morning work go to my other classes or whatever. When I get a second I?ll review, and this is when things get shaky. Sometimes I just coast through it like the night before, or sometimes I?ll have a hard time recalling the first step to a problem or something of that nature.
Then psychology rears its ugly nightmarish head again, and as soon as I get shaky on the first step of something, it?s like it?ll blow the whole process out of the water. It?s like looking down the barrel of a gun. I?m fine until that one little tiny practically random trigger gets pulled, then everything just gets blown away. I have come to expect this of myself. I?ll start fragmenting and mixing steps, forgetting the order of the steps so on and so forth. I lose complete confidence in my ability to figure out the problem off the top of my head.
So I?ll think ?Here we go again?? and I?ll crack the book open. I see the first step, the missing link and like magic all the previous information comes back like a flood. I remember how to do everything from the unit and from the previous class.
It?s like I lose something over time, like my confidence in my ability to recall the information off the top of my head.
And that?s exactly how I get jammed up at exam time.
I sit down, see that one problem, the trigger gets pulled, and a huge chunk of my exam is wiped out and never finished or done right.
I have a habit of paying extremely close attention to detail and sometimes missing the ?big picture? and I think this is somehow playing into my self-reinforced idea that when it comes to math on my own, I?m destined to crash and burn.
I?ve done tutors, books, videos etc. I?m convinced it has to do with my perspective as opposed to my ability to comprehend what seems to be extremely easy algebra. It?s just people cannot explain to me the ?right perspective? or the right way to look at math as a whole.
I do it sometimes, like in class, and other times I have no clue what?s going on. There?s something I?m missing, a system to go about applying to math as a whole, a way to view mathematical problems.
Facebook
Twitter