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100 Days of Productivity - Day 98 May 12, 2018

During my free periods I managed to get ancient history and English advanced homework complete, which I’m really happy with! I spent heaps of today reading - my to read list has grown majorly in the past few days and I can’t wait to get into it!

06 may 2018 [星期日]

Sneak peek of this week’s spread 👀

31.01.2018 // january in pages ☁︎☁︎

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

I was always one of those people who thought some people were naturally good at math and if I wasn’t one of those people then there was nothing I could do about it. I thought I wasn’t “a math person” and would use that description as an excuse. Is math one of my weaker subjects? Sure but that’s mostly because I let years of bad habits get in the way of my current work. This caught up to me in my first semester of calculus (calc I) at university, where calculus was my worst class. Here’s the thing: if you’re not “a math person” make yourself one. In my second semester of calculus (calc II) I improved my mark by an entire letter grade (something I never thought possible). How? Through hard work and by understanding that I would have to work harder than some people because of my past study habits.

Know your pre-calculus well! You will struggle so much if you forget the basics. My prof said not having a good grasp of the basics is the number one reason why students will struggle with calculus. Invest time before/at the beginning of the semester to really review the stuff you learned in high school. (Khan Academy is the best way to review, in my opinion. They have challenge questions you can do for each section. Try a couple of questions for each section. If you can’t answer the question easily, watch the accompanying videos for that section first. Do this for sections you forget or know you struggle with.) Be confident in your basic mental math too, especially under pressure. I wasn’t allowed a calculator on any of my midterms or finals for calc and you don’t want to waste time on easy math that you should know lightning fast anyway.

Attend every lecture, especially if you’re even slightly confused. If you’re behind, try not to get even more behind by skipping class (obviously use your own judgement, but don’t skip unless it’s totally necessary). Don’t sit near the back of the class if you know you won’t pay attention.

Don’t just sit there and copy down notes. Be attentive in class and follow along with examples the best you can. If you get lost at a certain step in a problem put a star beside it. After class, study and attempt the problem on your own. If you still don’t understand, go to a TA or prof for help. They will be able to provide better help if they can see exactly where you got lost.

Keep your notes simple. I would use either blue or black pen for the majority of my notes and use one other colour to emphasize parts of my notes (indicate where I got lost, circle important follows, highlight which section of the textbook the class was at, etc.) Keep your notes neat and leave a gap, if you fall behind during a lecture (just remember to get the notes from someone else later). I also recommend using a grid paper notebook, for when you need to draw graphs.

Get a mini notebook! I bought a tiny notebook for cheap and filled it with a (very) condensed version of my notes, throughout the semester. I wrote down common derivatives and integrals, shapes of common graphs, important theorems and formulas, etc. This is especially helpful for calc II, because you’ll have all the necessities from calc I handy.

Advice for using Maple for math labs (if this applies to you): Pay attention to tutorials and ask questions. Complete as many assignment questions as you can in the lab/when a TA is present. If you have any other assignment questions to finish up make sure you work on them at least a few days before they’re due, so you have time to ask for help if you need it. Also, Maple can be a stupid program. You could be missing just one number, letter, or symbol and it won’t work. Or you could have it exactly right and it still won’t work (retyping your input in a new worksheet usually helps). To remedy these issues, I would work on assignments with friends and compare what our worksheets looked like. Oh and TAs love if you give your variables funny names or change the colours of your graph, because they’re all nerds (and so are you, so embrace it).

Do as many practice problems as you can. Calculus is a class where you learn by doing. Do questions till you understand the concept. If problems are recommended, treat them as if they’re actually due (otherwise you’ll just tell yourself you didn’t have enough time to do any practice problems). My number one mistake was not doing enough practice problems and just assuming I knew how to answer the problem (if you can’t answer the entire question from start to finish, then you don’t actually understand the concept).

Please don’t fall behind. Stay on top of things and prioritize what needs to be done (i.e. treat practice problems from the chapter you just learned on equal footing with the lab report you have due – if you treat it as a priority, you will get it done). But, if you do fall really behind, don’t wait until it’s too late to ask for help. Just remember, there’s always something you can do (even if you feel like you don’t know anything and there’s not enough time for any practice problems before your midterm). Identify what you need to learn before you can do anything else (i.e. work on understanding basic integration before you try to do something more complicated like trigonometric substitution) and fit in as many practice questions as you can.

Don’t give up! If you don’t understand a concept right away you just have to keep trying! For practice problems, try to find an answer without looking at your notes. If you can’t figure it out from there, look in your lecture notes and textbook for any relevant formulas, examples, or similar questions. Try to answer the problem again. If you get it, be sure to fully complete another practice problem without any outside references. If you can’t figure out an answer then you should seek help from another person!

Don’t forget everything you learned at the beginning of the semester – review, review, review! Check out this explanation on the curve of forgetting. If you continually review what you learned, for only short periods of time, you will remember so much more and save yourself time in the end!

Utilize the resources available to you. I have a list of online resources at the end of this post, but don’t overlook what’s right in front of you. Go to your prof’s office hours, ask a TA for help, and take advantage of any tutoring or study groups. My uni has a math and science centre where upper year students are always available to help other students with practice problems. If you join a course union, they sometimes offer free tutoring.

Study in a productive environment. This varies by person but personally I need a quiet environment, with ideally no noise or only instrumental music, bright/natural lighting, and nothing to distract me (I hide my phone and only have one pen or pencil out). If you like to listen to music when you study, math is one of those subjects where you can listen to music with words.

Improve your test-taking skills. (1) On an exam, understanding a concept is no use if it takes you forever answer the question. Do lots of practice problems till you immediately know how to answer any kind of question. Speed can be key on exams. (2) My strategy is to flip through the exam booklet as I get it. I answer the questions I can do easily, first, and leave the really difficult ones till the end. (3) Show all of your work! Don’t lose marks because you didn’t show all of your work. (4) Expect your exams to be challenging and prepare accordingly. Overlearn the material. Prepare specifically for the exam by completing past exams/practice exams in an environment that mimics the test-taking environment.

Get every mark you can, because the little marks make a big difference. If you don’t know how to answer a question on an exam, write down any formula or theorem that could relevant. If you try to figure out a solution and know that it’s most likely incorrect, but don’t have enough time/knowledge to find the correct answer, just leave your work there (don’t erase it). There’s always a chance you could be on the right track or nice markers will give you a point or two for trying. Something is always better than nothing.

Focus on the applications of calculus (it’ll make the semester a whole lot more interesting)! A physics major won’t necessarily use calculus the same way a bio or chem major might, but that doesn’t mean some calculus isn’t useful for all of those majors to know. I’ve always planned to major in biology and looking ahead at classes I will need calculus for biostatistics and genetics classes. Never tell yourself something isn’t useful because then you’ll never treat it like it’s useful. Also, my prof taught a whole lecture about how calculus could be used to account for all the variables that could affect population if a zombie apocalypse ever happened, so obviously calculus has at least one really important use :)

Resources

A bit of advice: These are called resources for a reason. It’s okay once in a while to use some of the resources to find a full solution for a practice problem, but don’t abuse it. It is so so easy to just look up the answer but you’re only hurting yourself in the end.

Desmos (Online graphing calculator - I’ve made it through so far without actually buying a graphing calculator)

Khan Academy (Step by step videos and practice questions! You can go your own speed with the videos! My top recommendation!!!)

Paul’s Online Math Notes (If your prof doesn’t provide you with decent lecture notes, these ones are great!)

Symbolab (They have a calculator for derivatives, integrals, series, etc. and I like the way they split up the steps to solve.)

Slader (find your textbook on here and they’ll give you all the solutions to questions!)

Textbooks: I used the Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals (8th edition, by James Stewart) and it was awesome. The way it was set up and all the examples really helped me (I just wish I had used it more)

This post by @quantumheels is seriously fantastic (and she has lots of good advice for other topics too, one of my favourite blogs)

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A quote from a book!

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