Calculus 241
This semester I decided to take on my first college level math class: Calculus 241. In this class we started out with reviewing the precalculus concepts that I learned last year. After that we got into the real meat and potatoes of calculus: limits and derivatives. This was kind of unlike anything I'd ever learned before so the learning curve was interesting to say the least. Limits are all about finding what Y value a function approaches as it gets closer and closer to a given X value. This is especially useful when a function isn't defined at a certain point. Once I got an idea of how to use derivatives the class moved to using it to find the slope of tangent lines and finding a derivative of a function. A function's derivative plots its slope as a Y value with respect to X.
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The two 21st that I used the most by far were critical thinking and self direction. Since this is a college class most of the work and studying is done on my own time. And on top of that, college professors won't remind you to do your work that often, if at all. In addition to having to manage my time and assignments on my own I also had to wrap my brain around some very new concepts fairly quickly. Since this class is on a semester schedule new concepts are being introduced almost constantly.
I'm pretty happy with how I've been doing in this class, especially considering that this calculus class is more difficult than any other math class that I've done in the past. Between the new concepts and pretty fast pace I'm very glad that I was able to do pretty well in this class.
I'd say the thing I improved the most would have to be critical thinking. While I had to use and improve my self directional skills to deal with the workload, I already had quite a bit of practice with self direction last year during the height of the pandemic.
The most difficult part of this class is dealing with getting stuck. While I did get to have zoom classes twice a week and professor Okamoto would go over problems that we missed on Tuesdays. It was still incredibly frustrating and time consuming to miss a problem. Because not being able to understand something personally bothers me so I have to go over my notes and the textbook to find what I'm missing so I can hopefully do well on the test.
If I could start over and change one thing I would study and work with my classmates more. The class set up a discord group on the first day to share notes and help each other out if we got stuck on anything. It would've saved me a lot of headache if I simply asked for help when I got stuck on things.
Pre-calculus, as the name suggests, was the class that definitely related to this calculus class the most. Even though limits and derivatives weren't really covered in pre-calculus I was still taking limits and derivatives of functions that I learned about in pre-calculus. In addition to that, I also had to use plenty of algebra to manipulate and simplify equations.
I'm definitely going to have to use the knowledge that I learned in this class in upcoming semesters. I'm planning on perusing an engineering degree and that means many, many more calculus classes are going to be building on the knowledge that I learned from this class.
I'm pretty happy with how I've been doing in this class, especially considering that this calculus class is more difficult than any other math class that I've done in the past. Between the new concepts and pretty fast pace I'm very glad that I was able to do pretty well in this class.
I'd say the thing I improved the most would have to be critical thinking. While I had to use and improve my self directional skills to deal with the workload, I already had quite a bit of practice with self direction last year during the height of the pandemic.
The most difficult part of this class is dealing with getting stuck. While I did get to have zoom classes twice a week and professor Okamoto would go over problems that we missed on Tuesdays. It was still incredibly frustrating and time consuming to miss a problem. Because not being able to understand something personally bothers me so I have to go over my notes and the textbook to find what I'm missing so I can hopefully do well on the test.
If I could start over and change one thing I would study and work with my classmates more. The class set up a discord group on the first day to share notes and help each other out if we got stuck on anything. It would've saved me a lot of headache if I simply asked for help when I got stuck on things.
Pre-calculus, as the name suggests, was the class that definitely related to this calculus class the most. Even though limits and derivatives weren't really covered in pre-calculus I was still taking limits and derivatives of functions that I learned about in pre-calculus. In addition to that, I also had to use plenty of algebra to manipulate and simplify equations.
I'm definitely going to have to use the knowledge that I learned in this class in upcoming semesters. I'm planning on perusing an engineering degree and that means many, many more calculus classes are going to be building on the knowledge that I learned from this class.