Junior Electrical Engineering

Get a tutor.

Get extra assistance from your professors during their office hours.

Forget the idea of the time and being behind. take the time you neeed to MASTER THE MATERIAL- ESPECIALLY THE MATH.

When you are 30, 40, or 50, The investment of the extra time to "get it" will be seen as one of your smartest decisions ever.

However, be honest with yourself, was it your hectic work schedule tha was the problem, or was it insufficient time doing work?

You really need at least three hours of study/prep time for each hour of class/lab time if you are going to become expert.

Be honest with yourself. Get help. Take your time.

milo

Milo,

That was great and kind advice to the student. Before success there is a vision or belief that you can succeed and then there is perseverance and labor towards the goal.

Norm

Hi there

I just want to tell you that I have also had the same experience, and this only happened to me for one of my courses! but you know the feeling of being left behind really influenced my studies... it was like I didn't want to accept that failure!! Now when I look back I realise how wrong I was! I should have taken it easier...

All I can say is... to take it easy, but try your best for the future coming... and make your effort with a hope inside, and with joy...

Goodluck

Whatever else you do, don' quit!!!!!!!

Get rid of the idea that you are running some sort of race with anyone but yourself. That kind of thinking is self defeating. Focus on the subject, not on the time frame. Remember that space-time is relative.

You made it to your Junior year. It doesn't matter if it takes you five or even six or seven years to 'GET' it and graduate. Doing so, and keeping up with your field of interest, will provide you with a lifetime job, something that most people don't have.

I assume you are single and work to pay your way through school. Remember that nothing comes before your school work. That is your biggest brick. Put that in the jar first. Set up definite time to study. Your 'job' demands come second. Think of them as sand. Pour the sand around the brick. When the jar is full, empty the sand - that is the amount of time you have for 'work', socializing and networking.

Make sure that 2/3rds of your time be devoted to school. Slice up that last third into work, friends, and fun.

Consider partial matriculation, say have the load of a full matriculation. Talk to someone in guidence and in financial aid; there may be funds that you qualify for that you are unaware of.

Spend the summer getting tutoring, especially in math. Remember that every engineer started where you are. If they could make it so can you - you just need the desire and the passion to go the distance.

Whatever else you may have to give up now, it will be worth triple when you finish. Whatever else you do - DO NOT QUIT.

Good luck and keep us posted when you can.

Orpheuse

Excellent inspirational comment. Thank you Orpheuse.

Dear Kweguf,

mathematics is not so terrible as it looks to the uninitiated. All you need is a few lessons under the guidance of a tutor who can show you how to view a problem, and how to solve and interpret it. That may very well be worth the effort, because it will pay back throughout your professional career.

I have come across some boys who find completing their engineering courses as tough and they leave in between for alternative profession. Many due to weakness in Maths. It would have been better if you could have taken aptitude test before joining the course. What are your likings? do you like working on computers then better change over to computer science/engineering course. There is great future in IT industry.

Kweguf,

If you are having trouble with math the fault is almost certainly not yours, rather your teachers. Double that if you got math in elementary or high school levels teaching the new, new math. Those people cannot think their way out of a paper bag.

I don't know where you fall down on math but you should indeed find a good, old style, basic math teacher.

Have such a person check you on the basics, especially multiplication and divison. Conceptually those are not difficult problems but as you move into higher math it is essential time wise that those functions are automatic.

By the way speaking of automatic. One of the problems with the new, new math idiots is they have no conception, or at least they don't bring it to math instruction, that the learning process materially, is a process that grows new connections in your brain.

The new, new math fools think all they need do is explain a math process and then they can go on to new ground.

Truth of the matter is that in order to develop the section of your brain that handles math problems, so that math thinking is automatic, leaving you to consider the conceptual sides of a problem, there must be heavy repetition. It is not enough to solve a particular type of problem a couple of times and then go on, You won't remember it and even if you did your use of it would not be facile, thus hindering you.

That is why repetition is so important. Do each new function problem fifty or a hundred times. Then you will have created the brain synapses that will take over as though you were on auto pilot.

All this for the critical basics if you are not facile in those operations. But the same is true for each of the higher level operations. Stay away from the calculators the new, new math fools use to save time so they can go on to higher level functions.

That is all B.S. Through repetition you prepare your physical brain to do math. Repetition is tedious but unavoidable. If you are interested in engineering then I doubt you are unable or uninterested in doing the math. The simple matter is your teachers have not adequately prepared you.

The conceptual area of solving math problems is a little different. First, the conceptual issue is not about solving math problems but rather using math to solve conceptual problems in engineering or physics, etc.

That, once you are secure in the base elements, is where a tutor with some knowledge of the sciences would be especially useful. Such a tutor could show you how to convert, say, an engineering problem into math functions so as to be able to solve it.

But in all areas, repetition, repetition, repetition. Somewhere along the way that will turn into an auto-pilot freeing you to see how to apply one or another math function to the terms of an engineering problem.

Don't give up. Don't believe for a moment you don't have the intelligence to do math or to be an engineer. Keep at it and shortly, with repetition, you will just sail through your work.

j.

Did the same sorta thing, although I made it into my Sr. year. I took a couple of classes to be damn sure that I could qualify for an Associate Degree... and took that. I had to convice the faculty that I could handle both programming 101 and 102 at the same time.

Of course I had courses 3** and others at the time.

FYI it was a lady who led me into that, I married her , and she eventually divorced me.

Now "Power Generation Systems" is not my bag, but please finish it out. Get that BS!! I assure you that anything beyond is much easier.

Bill

There are too many people who have addressed the 'learning of math' thing to respond to any one of them, so I'll respond to you.

I also had trouble with connecting mathematical models and electrical stuff until I got a job as a technician and later an engineer at the university where I was working and taking courses. I took most of my math early and then started engineering courses.

Any math problems which dealt with engineering problems specifically were hard for me to understand, because I didn't know much about engineering. However, when I started taking engineering courses, I found it fairly easy to connect math and engineering.

Later on, I started consulting with graduate students who wanted to control a process, for example, and I would talk them through the problem using English instead of Math. Once they understood things like how much power does it take, what the rate of change of so and so is, how to integrate an error signal from process feedback to produce a change in plant output, etc., they suddenly understood what all the math was for.

Engineers and physicists use shorthand notation to describe systems, such as F=ma, which is a well-known thing that Isaac Newton came up with a few years back. If you think about the units of measure in that simple equation, F[lbs] and a[ft/s²], then mass, m, must be have units of [lb x s²/ft]. Wierd looking unit, huh?

Try thinking outside the box that math professors put you in, and I think you'll do better.

Good luck.

I have to agree with one of the other posters. the lack of understanding / enjoyment of math is not the problem of the student... but the professor. It has been many years since I finished school but I believe many professors are the same, not all, but some have lost the passion for teaching undergraduates. I went into my sophomore year with an OK understanding of math but nothing to write home about. When I took my first calculus class the professor was amazing. We got to see the effect of calculus in the real world how it was found, and how one could see it in seasons, moon phases, tides and on a more physical note in the general understanding of things like motion and acceleration. That one class jump started my math excitement. I went on to tutor math, trig and calculus during the end of my sophomore year. Perhaps you just need to get that jump start. Check in with your academic counsoler and see if there are any good tutors around. Don't be afraid to audition them... if the tutor doesnt float your boat, try another. If you want it bad enough someone is out there that can make you see what you need, to start you off.