I just started at Kirkwood Community College for Chemical Engineering and will likely be transferring to Iowa State after 2 years. I was always very successful in High School Mathematics, but am currently failing Calc I despite my best efforts. I was thinking of changing majors, but I really love my Chemistry and Engineering classes. In order to get my ChemEng degree I have to do 3 years of math courses, which I really don’t think I can do. What are people’s thoughts on this?
What are your “best efforts”? Are you getting help from the professor, reading the textbook, doing extra problems, using online resources like PatrickJMT or Khan Academy?
Daily tutoring, studying, and reading, weekly meets with professors. I haven’t used those online sources, so I might check them out.
If you can’t do calculus, you will struggle in many engineering courses.
Paul’s Online Math Notes is another good one. There are many many resources for Calc 1.
Does anyone have an idea of an engineering discipline that doesn’t have so much math? I should be able to pull through in Calc I.
There’s no easy way out here. If you want to be an engineer, you need to have a reasonable command of calculus and differential equations. You don’t have to be a genius, just proficient. The good news is that math is not really about innate ability as many people seem to think. It’s a lot more about finding the best way to study it (and the best way is never rote memorization).
Do you have any study-group for math forming from your current math class(es)? if not then form one but be advised as not to form a large study group with more than six people. Otherwise, if it is so large, you will not gain anything and some kids get bored and goof around. I know that some kids can explain and break-it-down math problems and its concepts better than the instructor/professor. And you can loosely ask any questions without being afraid to look dumb. Hopely this will help.
Well thank you all for your help.
Don’t look for a way out when the topic starts to look difficult. A lot of the difficulty of an engineering degree is overcoming that issue and surviving the program.
Calculus is tough for everyone. Unless you feel really, truly, hopelessly incapable of passing the class despite continued efforts (as opposed to merely having trouble with it and perhaps having to take it a second time), you are better served trying to push through if you have enough interest in engineering to want to work as one.