One of my courses, Linear Algebra, is a "transition" course. It is a level of abstraction above what most of the students have seen before, and it gives some students a lot of trouble. Now, I'm no stranger to courses that give students a lot of trouble. The big difference is that in this case, I've got a number of people who are math majors, who are getting their first taste of how hard math can be. A lot of people -- myself included -- are math majors because it always came easily. Except now, for some of my students, that's not true.
So, I look at some of these students and think, "They're never going to make it." Not that they aren't going to make it through Linear Algebra, but that they aren't going to make it through the program. If they can't handle this, they are going to get buried in some of the upper level courses. And there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.
I don't have the guts to say to a student that they are never going to make it. I fear being the guy they look back as they accept their Field's Medal and say, "And that jerk Collins told me I'd never be a math major." So I just try to help them out and hope that I'm wrong.
Friday Fragments
4 years ago
2 comments:
As a math major drop-out, I can totally relate! I took (and passed) linear algebra back in college, but don't know that I could tell you what it is now! However, the course that got me out of math (and into what I do now) was Diff Eq. I always loved math, until I got to those courses. If I had been a more serious student I probably could have survived, but it wasn't meant to be, I guess.
I suppose it's true. Not being a math major isn't the end of the world. One or two ex-math majors have been able to make a living in the world...
It's funny, because I don't think of DiffEq as a difficult course. But I had it from a terrible pushover, which is probably one reason why I still don't like it to this day.
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