<p>I want to go into BME and the thing that has me worrying is all the math classes. I enjoy math, but I am not GREAT at it. I can maintain an A in my HS math classes with some studying and help but from what I hear college is A LOT different. So not being able to "cruise" through a HS math class kinda had me worried lol.</p>
<p>To be honest, algebra is harder than calculus... it is so much more abstract. Calculus makes complete physical sense, which is why it is so important for engineers. The trick is that you really need to understand it, rather than just knowing how to do problems. Since algebra is abstract stuff, it is taught in ways that makes it really formulaic and easy to do... you never really have to understand any of it. You just know that the distributive property works, or that inverse properties can be used to solve for variables, and so on. Its not advisable to simplify things in this manner for calculus, however, because its utility lies in being able to freely use it without having to resort to any tricks.
So, make sure you really understand what's going on (ie: a derivative is just the slope formula in limit form)... get a good book if your professor doesn't make sense. Spend time in understanding the basics, and the more complicated stuff will just follow. Also, be good at trig, it helps with advanced integrals.</p>
Im nervous as hell. I am 37 and had been out of school for a long time due to a military career. I am pretty good at algebra, but i am absolutely petrified of calculus because i really struggled with the trig portions of pre-calculus. I have been coding for 2 years and have taken well to software development and data structures, but now that i am pursuing a computer science degree officially i am scared. I think i may take a refresher algebra course this semester, then trig, the start calculus…