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[3man75]

College started out with 4 easy classes and none except english {where i was "elected" group leaders of a project} and Algebra where i just can't get it and the damn teacher goes TOO fast. I swear she must be on fucking caffine overdose and my hand is invisible. Ive gone to the college's math labs and even done some study dates with freinds but i can't make enough progress and feel comfortable about passing. i've made the decison to drop the class and i'm not sure if my fed. grant will be suspended.

Anyone know of any thing i could be doing wrong? i spend an hour and 30 mins monday,tuesday, wedensday, and friday at labs. plus random time doing H.W.

Is it possible i just can't learn it?

[Tiruin]

I'd query if you're checking the context of what you're learning in the first place given this tiny statement which set of alarm bells.

Is it possible i just can't learn it?

Anything, can be learned. Some need more work to put into it, or some need to branch off from their mindset to grasp how certain methods of learning work.

My tiny bits of advice are not to think about passing-but learning. Passing will come in turn with learning.

Ive gone to the college's math labs and even done some study dates with freinds but i can't make enough progress and feel comfortable about passing. i've made the decison to drop the class and i'm not sure if my fed. grant will be suspended.

Drop? D:
Did you check how you organize time? Like, testing yourself with problems or questions related to the subject matter at hand? (Also if the teacher teaches fast, then keep up by reading ahead! )

Edit: Did you let your teacher know that you've had problems with her class? She may have breaktimes wherein you could go to her for clarification on what was taught in the day, and maybe even advanced lessons.

[Vector]

For the love of god, go to office hours.  Go every single time they're offered.  Let her know that you're struggling, come with specific questions on specific material, and push, push, push.

Ask her if you can record lectures because you can't understand her.  Borrow classmates' notes on top of your own handwritten notes and review after every lecture, and then review the week's notes at the end of the week, the month's notes at the end of the month, etc.

[nenjin]

I struggled a lot with math starting with High School Geometry all the way though to College Statistics. Went to good schools, even had a tutor for high school math. And, I'm not dense or anything. Excelled at other classes. Math and logic just aren't my strong suits.

That said, I got through it. Poorly. Had to take a math class at a community college just to qualify for University, I was in such bad shape.

Can you be more specific about what your problem areas are? Do you struggle with core concepts? Can you just not parse a formula after it gets too complicated? Do you feel like, even after reading the book or chapter, there's something you're missing that isn't written down anywhere? For me, I got a lot of anxiety out of trying to work out problems myself. I'd constantly be going back to the start of a chapter and working my way back to the section I was in, and still having problems. What turned out was happening, quite often, was I rushing myself. Making simple mistakes because I'd fly through the part of the problem I thought I understood, and inevitably throwing off the rest. Mostly I was bad about remembering "rules" as they applied to what I was doing, and kept trying to take easy mental shortcuts. Not trying to blame you or say that's what you're doing, but it's something worth considering, especially as frustrated as you sound.

[gimlet]

Don't expect to catch up in a week.  Linear Algebra was my wake up call - calculus was a breeze compared to it.  I was getting farther and farther behind until I kicked it up to high gear.  I got books of problems with detailed answers to work out, I scoured the library for other texts to read different descriptions of sections that I wasn't understanding - every text has some weaknesses, and getting even slightly different approaches really helped when I was just not "getting it".   I drilled on problems until I could do the operations by rote.  I had to go back in the book and redo sections that I had thought I learned, but was fooling myself - I thought I had learned sections when I could do the problems in context with knowing what chapter they were from, but it was a whole different story when I mixed them up and tried to do them without those clues.   

Then, FINALLY after weeks of the above, and doing the problems by rote without really understanding why, it started to click and became a whole fuckton easier because I could apply reasoning instead of pure memorization - and it was an awesome feeling of accomplishment that I still remember decades later...

I noticed it was a problem for other "good students in high school" - there it was easy enough to learn everything just by listening reasonably well to class lectures, so we didn't really learn how to study effectively or overcome difficulties.  And we really weren't used to getting stuck on things for more than a day or 2 - it was quite a shock to HAVE to find ways to learn from the book, and if that wasn't enough to take responsibility for searching out whatever it took to get the job done.   The above was just what worked for me, everybody responds differently to different ways of learning.  You have to work out your own method to learn how to learn, and find out what works for you - good luck!

Edit:  Oh, some of the cockiness from having been a pretty good student helped too - my thoughts were more like "Millions of students have managed to learn this somehow, and dammit I'm not dumber than all of them.  It must not be impossible, I just have to try different things until I find something that works..."  instead of "I'll never ever understand this".

[Draignean]

Is it possible i just can't learn it?

No.

Anyone know of any thing i could be doing wrong? i spend an hour and 30 mins monday,tuesday, wedensday, and friday at labs. plus random time doing H.W.

    If you're struggling, this isn't anywhere close to good enough. Unless you mean something different when you say labs, then you're essentially doing class time + time spent doing homework. The old check to see how much time you should be putting into a college class is actually pretty good for your first couple years; take the class' credit hours, multiply by 2 if you're struggling or 3 if you have no idea what you're doing. The resulting number is how long you should spend studying outside of normal class hours. This breaks down when you get into higher level courses, but it works pretty well in the beginning.

    Math up to DQ came relatively easy to me, but I can understand where you're coming from. The section of physics that dealt with E-fields, magnetism, etc, made me feel like parts of my brain were leaking out of my head. Actually, they still do. Every other class I could do after a couple lectures and a review of equation. Much like Gimlet said, there comes a time when we eventually realize that we're in college, and not everything we do can come out of a series of hour long lectures.

  So, advice from me. E-mail your professor to see if you can get additional office hours, ambush your TA's if you have any. Use the back of the book problems. Use WolframAlpha to check your work but NEVER to do a problem for you. Attend office hours, attend SI if they offer it, if your college has a free tutoring center, go there and make use of it.

Good luck, and good hunting.

[3man75]

The reason i dropped mostly was because i just finished one of her lectures like "wtf how is it that i feel like i missed something?".

also...she announced  that our portfolio's had to be turned in by next class. I thought i was ready and everything until i asked what homework she gave out. 

Well turns out we were suppose to do 10 problems of each section and show that we could do them well {step by step}. we had done 12 sections and i was already to brainfucked to say "i can do this". I still have the book and i can isolate X and combine varriables. it's just when you mix word problems and certain formula's like:

" The octane rating of gasoline is a measure of its antiknock qualities. For a standard fuel, the octane rating is the percent of isooctane. How many liters of pure isooctane should be mixed with 200 L of 94% isooctane, reffered to as 94 octane, to get a mixture that is 98% isooctane?"

this question is an example but if i were to just treat it as a regular problem id be like " okay *reread*. there's this element called octane and i need to add X to make it 98%. I have 94% as is sooo what's 4% and where do i get that number?" Again this is an example question and i still need to reread it a bunch more and talk my way through it. Plus you 12 days of class with 2 new chapters each day {each chapter is like 3-6 examples, } then one "extra practice day, and then exam. rince and repeat till the rest of the year. I can't say that my initial motivation just wasn't there.

I also agree with high school math because i honestly can't say i didn't learn much {especially in less than 2 days. for me it was like 1 day of class and a H.W and then that's it until later when i needed to reread something}. Arithmetic wise though how do you learn 1 brutal concept in more than 2 days when theirs more you need to learn. Idk i felt pushed for time and if i can't do something in what my brain says "reasonable" then i kinda start shutting down. Maybe college isn't for me...

[Shakerag]

For the love of god, go to office hours.  Go every single time they're offered.  Let her know that you're struggling, come with specific questions on specific material, and push, push, push.

This.  So much this.

I pretty much coasted through most of my math classes, up to the 4th year college ones.  As a side note, no I wasn't a math major; I had the poor judgment to take the math-heavy computer science path.  Then I got a 'D' and an 'F' on my first two exams/quizzes in Numerical Analysis.  I was right outside the door of that teacher's office every time he had office hours after that point.  If I didn't understand something, I asked about it until I did, even if I felt like the teacher had to talk me like I was an idiot.  I had to eat, breathe, and shit math for that semester, but I finally squeaked out a 'C' in the class overall.  I can honestly say that I never put in half the effort I did for that class in any other class I took both as an undergrad and as a grad student. 

[KingBacon]

I didn't know how to do fractions until I was a junior in college, now I'm getting a PhD in Economics (Applied Math in Disguise.)

My suggestion is if you don't know a concept, youtube it. So many people/TA's put up step by step lectures, and you can rewind. 3man, do you work or have a sport you need to play? If you have time you should learn algebra, knowing math lets you solve problems that leaves most people going derp. It's a good skill to develop. I did poorly with math in high school and suicide rushed it the last two years of college, math is hard and takes effort. Once you get it, it's like riding a bicycle. 

" The octane rating of gasoline is a measure of its antiknock qualities. For a standard fuel, the octane rating is the percent of isooctane. How many liters of pure isooctane should be mixed with 200 L of 94% isooctane, reffered to as 94 octane, to get a mixture that is 98% isooctane?"

You want:

98/100

You have 200*.94 = 2*94/200

(2*94 + x) /200 = 98/100

If you divide the right hand side by two you get x/2 = 4 so x = 8, cross multiplying gets the same result:

x = 200*98/100 - 2*94 = 2*98 - 2*94 = 196 - 188 = 8

Answer is easy if you know fractions (which knowing is necessary for proper tipping/shaming your friends for whipping out their phones to do tips.)

Tip trick: You have a bill for say $12.37 and want to know the tip. Well 1/10 or .1 of that is 1.237 or around 1.24. If you want to tip 15%, do 1.24 + 1.24/2 = 1.24 + .67 = 1.91. 20% is just double, so $2.48

Or you could just tip $2 like a sane person.

[Vector]

Also, find out where the math majors hang out for emergency info.  They will be grumpy as fuck about helping you, but they are pretty likely to do it and have excellent study tips.