A Quarter in Review
To sum up this quarter, it has had ups and downs, but gladly a majority of it was ups. The biggest lesson I learned is that, while this is an applied calculus class, it is more of a learned calculus class because so much calculus is used in physics before it is learned in the classroom. The best thing to compare it to is a special kind of road trip. You know where you are starting and the final destination and, most importantly, why you need to get there, but the second you look down at your road map, you remember you can’t read, understand symbols, and heck, the road map hasn’t even been fully unfolded yet.
The good news is that you have the resources to figure it out. I remember watching the educator video on air resistance and the use of differential equations and integrals to a level I hadn’t seen before, and while it honestly left me kind of fuzzy, it was a lot of fun knowing that’s where we were going. I can understand why it can be somewhat jarring, but as a class I know we have the persistence and resources to figure this out. We have the textbook which gives an overview of these principles, the educator videos which can give overviews and practice, the internet is basically an open book where we could self teach ourselves, we have other students, and the man who wrote the textbook is our teacher.
This brings me to our next point. Many people look at this class and see how independent it is. After the first quarter, I’m going to have to disagree with that statement. The support and cooperation of other students in the class is more than I have seen in any other class, both inside and outside of the classroom. If someone takes this class thinking it is meant to be fully independent they will fail. Just remember, there are others to help and deadlines… lots and lots of deadlines.
Thanks for reading-ThePeculiarParticle
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