Back to school after 5 years, figured id finally finish up that engineering degree, got all of my Gen eds out of the way and me and my fiancée have even moved out to be closer to the school.
Did my first calc 2 lesson today, had so much trouble following even though I took my meds, we broke into groups and I was less than useless, didn’t remember a lick from calc 1, very foundational shit. One little shit even laughed at me when I tried to answer something.
I already have a pretty big learning disability I’m working with, I feel like I’m going to have to relearn all the concepts from the first class just to keep up in this one. Not a great start to my school career and not making me feel great about picking school back up at 30.
That’s it, respond how you want, I just think I needed to write this out to organize my thoughts on the matter
Cal2 is hard! Especially if you have a learning disability. I have ADHD and I strongly suspect dyscalculia, and am just really really bad at math and I went into Cal2 straight from Cal1 (while attending college in my 30s) and I still thought I was going to lose my mind. There were many tears shed in the first few weeks but I kept plugging away at it, used all the resources I had available, the Internet, school tutors, stayed after class to talk to my instructor and went to his office during office hours. Eventually about halfway through the semester the switch clicked in my brain. I got my first ever 100% on a math test in my life, and I got an A overall in the entire class. My instructor told me at the end that he was proud of me and I walked out of class and cried happy tears instead of the furious frustrated tears I had cried at the beginning.
Good luck, remember to be patient with yourself and show yourself the same love and grace you would show another person who is struggling with a learning disability and the adjustment of returning into an academic setting. Don’t be afraid to look stupid, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and use any resource you can. When I started my Cal2 class I sat down with a tutor who happened to be one of the college math instructors and I said “I think I’ve forgotten everything I know about math, can you help me refresh on what I need to know for Cal2 because I’m panicking.” She actually had a cheatsheet saved with all the concepts that students needed to know to start into Cal2 and I used it not only to study but to refer back to and still have it and occasionally refer to it.
You can do this!
“Dyscalculia” I’ll have to remember that one lol, you know it’s funny I actually quite enjoy math and I find some number concepts fascinating, but it’s the frustration of my brain not being able to “immediately get it” that I think stems from my ADHD as well.
I’ve been reading through the book and trying to understand old concepts, no tutors just yet but I’ll be honest having chatGPT work through problems with me has been a life saver, (after verifying of course), could definitely use a cheat sheet like that though, maybe my old notes exist somewhere I can use.
Honestly I know In my logical side that I’ll pick it up, I’ve done it before, but my emotional side is taking the reigns for now and I’ve gotta remember that
I went back to school at 35. School is a totally different animal than work and it takes a bit to get back into the groove. You bring age and experience that will benefit you once you get the hang of being back in the classroom.
I’ll be honest it does actually make me feel kinda badass when I’m grouped with a bunch of young’uns and you have way more social and practical skillsets.
I remember I was helping in an intro to engineering project and my team was just blown away that I could make dumb little CAD animations of our robot moving for the presentation, felt like a rock star