<p>Thanks for taking the time to read over this and hopefully I can be offered some advice. I graduated high school in 2011 and under the pressure of finding a decent major I decided to major in Electrical Engineering. Before college I had always been a B math student, and dropped out of a STEM program offered by the high school my freshman year because I played 3 sports in high school and did not have the time to study STEM.</p>
<p>Once I graduated I went to the local community college and found a relative degree of difficulty in my classes, but eventually passed Calc 1,2,3 diff eq etc with a culumative GPA of 3.09 before I transferred to a top 20 public engineering program at a flag ship school. </p>
<p>I have a full time internship in electrical engineering where they pay for my tuition and books in return for a couple of years of service upon graduation. While i disliked my classes, I really enjoyed being an engineering intern full time during the summer and winter. I am very interested in the phenoma of electricity and we work on cool stuff.</p>
<p>Once I entered the university after 1 semester I had a 1.7 gpa. I worked hard and didn't party much but I found the material to be overwhelming. Im my second semester I am still failing exams, after putting in 60 hours a week with class and study included which averages around 14 hours a day studying. I am considering going back to my community college in the Spring to finish my last semester and then transfer to a private engineering school which caters to local people who work full time and want to get their engineering degree.</p>
<p>My question is, should I continue my pursuit of an electrical engineering degree at an easier school or find a different path? I am not very strong in math, I am very good at physics and I have an incredibly hard work ethic. </p>
<p>Wat. 14 hours a day studying? My school’s average is a 2.8 GPA due to harsh grading, and I’m doing quite fine with doing quite a bit less than 14 hours a day. I think you might need to re-evaluate your studying schedule. Are you doing rote memorization? Or are you doing a lot of varied problems from your text book? Are you doing all the homeworks and going to office hours? Have you talked to your professors throughout your semester with questions? </p>
<p>If you think the material is overwhelming, I sincerely hope you are taking advantage of office hours, TA’s, and tutoring. </p>
<p>I’m all about hard work and work ethic, but sometimes it’s all about working “smarter” and not harder.</p>
<p>I think you need to reassess your study habits and strategy. 14 hours per day is ridiculous. That tells me that whatever you are doing isn’t working very well. If you haven’t already, find a study group. Go to office hours. Ask questions. Focus on the fundamental concepts, as a good grasp of those will greatly aid in their application down the road. Do not simply just identify and mimick the solutions for problems and try to reproduce them on exams. You need to know why each step is taken.</p>
<p>You had a bad semester adjusting to a 4 year school. I see this all the time with transfers from Community Colleges to my school. As the others said, you have not figured out how to study for the kinds of courses you need to take for engineering. This won’t be any different in a private school than your current one if the Engineering program is ABET accredited.</p>
<p>Take this first semester as a warning that you need to change the way you work, take fewer courses next semester (it might extend your time to graduation a bit but I have seen lots of engineering students do better with a slightly lighter load) and locate the nearest study group. It is great to do things on your own but not everyone can do so and in a group you will learn from others and learn from trying to explain to others too.</p>
I may have misunderstood, but how does 60 hours per week of class + study work out to an average of 14 hours per day of study? 14 hours per day of study + class would be more than 100 hours.</p>
<p>I study about 3 or 4 hours on Fridays and Saturdays with 5 on Sunday so I just go extremely hard during the week to try to balance everything. I’m in the “weed out” portion of the circiculum here and an a lot of assignments are thrown at us to see how we handle it.</p>
<p>Yes, during the first semester I believed I rely too heavily on route memorization. I thought the course material was too difficult to “think” through and I would go to study groups and have other members solve problems while I tried to understand what was going on without full understanding. This semester I do less route memorization and more problem solving on my own, which has helped but the problem has not completely been rectified. </p>
<p>When I go to lecture I try to focus but I quickly do not understand fully what is going on in my technical electrical engineering courses. I have a tutor for two of my four classes, where I saw little improvement in my last exam grade leading me into the final with a grade I have to obtain of at least a “B” which the professor has said he has never seen anyone obtain this grade with getting “D”'s on the first two exams.</p>
<p>It sounds as though everyone believes I should continue to try to get my EE degree, but change my study habits. How can I go to lecture and retain information better? I already read before class, go to lecture and try to understand and afterwords go home and summarize the lecture, AND THEN when I try to solve problems I do not know where to start. The professor says we should be able to solve these problems without significant assistance which I seem to always need to have.</p>
<p>If you manage your time properly and improve your study habits then there is no reason to be studying extra hard to make up for “only” studying 3 to 5 hours per day on weekends. If you improve your studying and comprehension skills, that should be more than enough. After all, you have to have personal time to relax or you’ll go nuts.</p>
<p>Also, I guarantee that professors are not just thrown at you to see how you handle it. No professor likes it when his students fall behind and are no longer understanding the material. At worst, they are indifferent, but most genuinely want to see you learn the material. If they assigned something, that generally means they things it’s important to help you learn, not just to see you squirm.</p>
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<p>Do you ask questions when you fall behind? Do you go to office hours to ask about material that you didn’t quite follow in lecture? You are paying the university to take that class. Make sure you use the means at your disposal to try and understand and learn the material or else you are just wasting your money. That means you need to ask the professor questions, either in lecture or office hours or both. If you don’t utilize the expertise of the professor, how is it any different than just trying to teach yourself?</p>
<p>It sounds like you have the right work ethic, just not the right approach. Ask questions in class when you don’t understand. Go to office hours and ask questions if you still don’t understand. Work in a study group and ask your friends and peers questions there; you will often all have a different perspective on a given problem and can help each other learn how to approach them. It’s impossible for us to speculate given what you’ve said so far, but do you know what sorts of topics tend to lose you during lecture? Is it that you can’t follow the math? Maybe you need to brush up on your math, if that’s the case. The same goes for any other topic (physics?).</p>
<p>I do not use the expertise of the professor much at all because frankly there is a culture of “I’m busy, leave me alone” with a class size of about 60 students. I think at my community college the material was easier but I was also able to have 1on1 time with my professors which I do not receive at the university. I work in a study group in my circuits class and it really does help me, I do not have the same in the class which I have to score well on the final in. I compensate by trying to route memorize the material and this helps when I take the study guide by is a disaster during an exam. </p>
<p>Most of the time when I have a question I just try to solve it on my own and I think that is because of the community college experience where a lot of it is geared towards learning on your own where here in the university is it about learning in groups. I will find a study group for my class and I will ask questions when need be because this is the advice I am constantly given. The math of the classes throws me in a daze and intimates me in class, those are the topics that lose me during lecture. I can understand what is going on but when three boards are filled with equations I guess I do not follow anymore and give up on trying to understand, which is certainly not my goal.</p>
<p>This is the root of your problem. We’re not med students, we’re engineers… as such, you need to be able to understand the lowest level elements of any problem. Understanding the theory is absolutely essential to doing well in engineering, or any science program. </p>
<p>I realize that it’s tempting to want to take shortcuts by recognizing patterns in example problems done in class, and then applying those patterns to future exam or quiz problems. Don’t fall in to this trap! Avoid the temptation… Take the time to understand every element of the problem, even if it requires having to review material from years back.</p>
<p>Once you improve your understanding of the low-level stuff, the high-level stuff becomes much more manageable. You will be able to do your homework more efficiently, and have a lot more free time to pursue hobbies and enjoy college.</p>
<p>“I study about 3 or 4 hours on Fridays and Saturdays with 5 on Sunday so I just go extremely hard during the week to try to balance everything.” So then you study 14 hours on M-Thu? I think this is your first problem. If you are struggling, why don’t you study much more Fri-Sun, and less during the week so you can get some exercise and do some other activities. Part of your problem is probably fatigue–too much studying in one day isn’t that productive and 14 hours is too long to keep your brain in top shape. Also, are you distracted by facebook and texts while you work? Turn all those distractions off.</p>
<p>“I would go to study groups and have other members solve problems while I tried to understand what was going on without full understanding.” Nodding along while other people solve the problems is not going to teach you what you need to know. You need to solve problems yourself. Try working the problems on your own before the group meets. Even if you can’t solve them, once you’ve wrestled with them you will get more out of the group work, and hopefully become a contributor.</p>
<p>“How can I go to lecture and retain information better? I already read before class, go to lecture and try to understand and afterwords go home and summarize the lecture, AND THEN when I try to solve problems I do not know where to start.” Maybe try recopying your notes after each lecture and go over all the problems that were solved in class before you try to do any.</p>
<p>@mathyone:
Very great tips, thank you for the advice… I study less during the weekend because when I attempt a problem by myself on the weekend I get virtually no where. Maybe if I dive deeper into my notes and the lectures the problems will be more approachable to me when I start them.</p>
<p>@fractalmstr:
I was told to “not worry about the theory, but how to solve the problem” because of the complex things going on engineering wise, but I do not see how I can solve a problem without fully understanding it like you said.</p>
<p>Problem solving ability is one of those intangible skills. You’re either good at figuring things out, or you’re not. Some people (heck, most people) are really terrible when it comes to dissecting/simplifying complex problems.</p>
<p>An understanding of the theory goes hand-in-hand with problem solving ability. You need both in order to do well. In other words, you might have excellent problem solving skills but not know anything about the material… in which case you wouldn’t do well because you don’t have enough understanding of the mechanics at play.</p>
<p>What is someone who naturally isn’t good at figuring things out wants to be an engineer? Do they just throw their hands up in the air and say oh well and do something else? I’ve passed Calculus III and Differential Equations which is fairly a big accomplishment being that in my entire family and beyond the highest math anyone took before me was algebra 2. My family is full of blue collar people and I notice that I naturally do not have the same skills as other kids whose parents are engineers, but I am not going to let that stop me in getting a engineering degree. I am going to transfer to a school which is easier and I’ll be able to get more individualized attention but I’ve come this fair, and I’m not letting genetics or intangible skills get in the way of that.</p>
<p>If you’re not good at figuring things out, you work hard enough until you can understand the material. This does not necessarily mean studying 14 hours a day… And it’s not like engineers go about teaching their kids engineering. My parents are both chemists… and I suck at chemistry. Plenty of engineer’s children are not engineers (or good engineers). Genetics have no part (barring mental disorders). </p>
<p>Your family background or genetics shouldn’t be a huge factor in your current success in engineering. Don’t even think of that. Just focus on working smarter and working through difficulties.</p>
<p>Noimagination- I spent all of this weekend re writing key points of lecture notes, text book pages, example problems and I just flat out can’t do this stuff on my own. It is just that difficult to me.</p>
<p>And this should tell you that whatever it is that you are doing isn’t working and you need to try and change your approach. I’d also imagine that this “can’t” attitude has become somewhat self-fulfilling.</p>
<p>Otherwise, you didn’t really respond to noimagination’s suggestion that you give an example of a topic that is giving you a hard time.</p>
<p>Calculus III and Dif Eq I are fairly difficult but they pale in comparison to even introductory circuits classes in terms of difficulty. At my school i had to take Diff Eq 2 which deals with the mathematics behind Fourier series and Transforms. It was sort of like what Diff Eq 1 was to second order RLC circuits. </p>
<p>P.S. Does anybody remember the episode of The Big Bang Theory where they are developing an app for Fourier and Sheldon derides Howard saying he wouldn’t understand it? because starting next Fall at my school they are making M.E. take Fourier.</p>