I like to say that I’m on an adventure.  Not necessarily on a physical or excruciatingly exploratory one either.  Attending college is quite demanding, and it can really shock a person who has never taken classes at a college level. At least, that’s what it did to me.  Not now, of course, but way back when Autumn quarter was just beginning.  I remember my first Calculus midterm.  I thought to myself, heh, this shouldn’t be too difficult, I did it all in high school!  I get the test, and it turns out that I was dead wrong.  Not only are the problems harder than anything I’ve ever seen before, but they are extremely obnoxious.  The grade that I received on the first midterm was my lowest grade ever.  Believe me, a 46% was quite a shock.

To give you an idea of just how obnoxious the problems can be, here is one example.  You had to find \frac{d}{dx} (ln(ln(ln(ln(ln(ln(x)))))) .  Of course, finding derivatives is not a challenging task, but with the number of problems in the allotted time, this was just purely annoying.  We even had to prove that \frac{d}{dx} (sinx) = cosx on the second midterm!  I guess that now I am just complaining, but there was no mention of having to know any sort of proofs during the review sessions.  They just kind of expected you to know these like the back of your hand.

To top it all off, the time limit for the midterms was only 48 minutes.  On each midterm, there were 5 problems.  Mind you, each problem had about 3 parts.  I found myself rushing, especially on the first midterm.  But sure enough, as Calculus moved along, I got better at “budgeting” my time.  Just a heads up to those of you who are considering or have to take math at OSU, I highly recommend going to all of the review sessions, they were life savers for me.

Well, I think that’s all I’ll write for now, I hope to use this blog as somewhat of a public journal to keep people updated. Bye for now and check back later!