I hate to keep annoying people here whenever i get stressed out but…here we go:
I am indeed behind in terms of math. Im a junior in highschool, and currently taking an algebra 2 course. Im good at math but for what ever reason i started highschool with alg1 then i took geometry in sophmore year. Here is the problem, its not good. Most “smart” people are taking pre calc by now and im sitting here wasting my time. Im by no means a lazy student, in fact im an a student whos really hard working. Regardless, im thinking of finishing my alg2 course that im taking currently, and over the summer go to a comunity college and take pre cal. That way i can take calculus next year. Im honestly just dissapoonted with my self. I dont think i can get into a good in state college(in ga) for a Stem major(computer science) considering that prior to this year i had no ap classes. However this year im taking two (ap com sci principles & ap us). To be fair to myself though my english was still not that impressive by freshman year (came to us since 6th grade) so ap wouldnt have been my best option. Regardless, any tips for me would be great. Also, i have not yet studied or taken the sat but planing on getting a tutor by this month and going full try hard. Overall, i would describe my current state of mind as sad, dissapointed, and lost. HELP!
It’s perfectly normal to be lost and feel mediocre at your age. It happens to quite the majority of students around you too and is a phase even the “top” students undergo (students you believe are far ahead of you and area already taking pre-calc).
If you are too stressed or feel anxious, don’t feel uncomfortable looking for counseling. Even just once a week for an hour could be a huge change if it de-stresses you.
Having stated that, my personal experience to these anxiety was just “hitting the books”. What I mean by that is I felt that I was more anxious when I was worrying than doing. For instance, if there’s a lot of homework due the following day, the concept of unending work would constantly be reminded all day making me constantly stressed. However, that feeling just disappeared and when I just went straight to the assignment without much thought. I would end up realizing the work was do-able and not be stressed afterwards.
And it isn’t just studying. I ended up spreading this attitude to other aspects of my life.
“I wish I can draw.” → Just start making a time slot and draw 30 min to an hr a day without rest
“I wish I could play basketball just like some of my friends” → Just start throwing shots everyday for an hour.
“I can never be as good in guitar. It takes too much time and I don’t have talent” → Just start playing guitar. Within a few months of an hour a day is enough for you to be a relatively advanced guitarist tbh.
What I would do since you are weak at mathematics is spend an extra 1 hour everyday without rest constantly solving problems in Algebra 2 or whatever you are doing.
Not “reading” or whatever, I mean explicitly solving problems for an hour a day. That probably might require another 30 min or so beforehand to understand the concept of the steps.
Repetition can sometimes be helpful. Grab your pencil and keep solving problems. You will notice patterns in mathematics.
Some may call this “robotic” but that’s not really true. Understanding the concept and why it works should be a given. It is from there you build the rest of the foundation. So think of this routine as more of building your building blocks for the future.
It also is helpful if you have a study buddy (a friend) who is willing to take part in your journey.
Ask your friends for help with mathematics or just go to the library everyday after school together and start solving math.
Ask your school math teacher for resources for you to improve. Ask him or her to assign you extra homework. Tell them you want to have 5x or 7x or whateverx the amount of homework everyone else gets.
Tell your school adviser that you really want to improve in mathematics. Tell your parents also.
Find students in your grade who excel in mathematics and befriend them. Ask them if you can study together with them. See how they study. Copy the pattern. It really helps when you can SEE how top students in a subject work. Emulate the way they study.
Also, always ALWAYS review what you solve. Reviewing is critical to improvement. You have to know where you did wrong. If you got a problem. Redo it until you get it right. Don’t be like. OK, I got this wrong, “X”, next. Number of solved questions != improvement. Improvement comes from learning the things you got wrong.
If you follow just that procedure I mentioned above, you should be fine.
You don’t have to catch up right away in high school. As long as you are consistent with your work, by the time it matters (college or after college), you will be more prepared than the vast majority.
You might say, “1 hour a day everyday. I hear it all the time but it can’t be that helpful”.
Well, I say this. If you played an instrument 1 hour a day from middle school with the effort to improve, you would probably be one of the best incoming students to Julliard
If you went to the gym 1 hour a day for 2 or 3 years. You are going to have a super buff body.
A small amount of effort everyday honestly is scary long term. It is better to do 1 hour a day for 7 days a week than 7 hours in 1 day. Your body and mind will start optimizing from the patterns over the days as it becomes more of second nature.
Finally, enjoy your high school man. Don’t stress too much. Just hit to the source of problem.
You are weak at math? Associate with people with good at math and get inspired from them while you work on your math muscles everyday for at least an hr outside school work.
Also for SAT, I highly recommend you try studying by yourself first. The act of learning independently is a skill that is extremely beneficial in life. If you can find a way to improve by working from yourself (studying the books by yourself and reviewing the questions you got wrong), then you can utilize that skill set on every other subject out there in your life.
Just buy 2 or 3 SAT books and study it everyday for an hour. Time your sections exactly or 5 minute less. Be brutal in your marking. Review any questions you got wrong. Generally in the beginning, you will be spending if 10 minutes to solve something, about 30 min~2 hours on reviewing. You have Internet as the resource. You can search stuffs you don’t understand.
That’s all I got to say. I understand my answer might not be helpful but I felt for most students, the difference between someone who struggled and someone who didn’t was simple.
- They didn’t know how to improve. The art of improving by yourself is a skill in itself. Don’t be like, “oh, that was a mistake I knew. 3+6 = 9 I mistook for 8, next. No. Redo that question 2 or 3 times independently. Make your hands become familiar with it. You will fear making mistakes from them and make less mistakes”
- They didn’t know how to study. That’s why you should associate and see how top students in any area study or work or ask for guidance from your mentor (teachers, etc.). The art of studying in a subject is something worth learning and can be applied anywhere in life.
- They just were lazy and complained wanting quick results. Look, the concept of compound interest exists for a reason. A small work of 1 hr to 1 hr and a half everyday working with the mindset to “improve” is huge. Sure in the short run you might not see results but short run shouldn’t be your concern. It is the final step that matters in the long run. You got years ahead of you. Honestly, if you study mathematics outside your classwork for 1 hr to 1 hr 30 min everyday from today, by the time you are in college, you would probably be one of the top students or the top student in your undergrad for mathematics (in terms of aptitude). Maybe you might not be and mathematics might just not be for you but at least you won’t have regrets and you would be confident you tried.
- ENJOY the subject you face difficulty in. If you enjoy the process and the work you do, you are just going to be more productive at it.
- Understand what goes on. Don’t just blindly assume stuffs. Why are there infinitely many prime numbers? Give some thought instead of taking everything for granted. “Why are there infinitely many prime numbers?” in Google should give you the answer in case you are wondering. Question everything and in your spare time, keep thinking of “why is that true or why am I doing this or that way over maybe that way” in your free time.
Understand that you are not dumb or anything if you struggle in algebra 2 or pre-calculus. These are fields that took several hundreds of humanity to be found. These are DIFFICULT fields that the best of the best back in the days before figuring all this out spent a lifetime researching. A lifetime as in some mathematicians figuring a small sub-section of a chapter after devoting their entire lifetime (some even breathed the subject from morning to night. From breakfast to night everyday).
If you want some motivation, maybe I will tell you my life.
I spend an hour a day on drawing.
I spend an hour a day on reading.
I spend a bit over an hour a day on hitting the gym.
I spend an hour a day improving my algorithm skills.
I spend an hour a day making breakfast, lunch, dinner instead of going out.
I every weekend try something new and always initiate contact to my friends.
Every weekend, I try to think what I can add more to my life that I would enjoy or want to become better at. And add them if necessary like spending an hour a day throwing shots in the basketball, etc.
And somehow before I know it within 2 or 3 months, I am a completely different self from before. And that’s what is important. You improving. Not the letter grade or what not. As long as you are improving consistently, that’s all there needs to be at it. Just compete with yourself, don’t compare yourself with others.
btw, these are all AFTER work when I am already dead tired and want to crash to the bed. However, I took a schedule and will not falter. Why? Cause once I make an exception once, I will start to always find ways to skip or not be as diligent. And the prospect of not achieving and gaining fear fears me more than going through the above daily.
^ That said, I would never have done this in high school myself cause well, who does honestly. But if you really want to improve, please do the above a try of studying an extra hour a day everyday with the mindset of improving (not filling hours).
You will become a different self after a few months I can guarantee.
Wow, thank you so much for taking that tike out of your day to give me these tips. I will for sure start utilizing them but its just really hard for me becauseas an immigrant, whose family works twice an 9 to 5 job i feel like i should have accomplished more. Specially my sister getting to ga tech didnt help that fact eaither. That being said, do you think aside from one hour of math a day i should still aim fir pre-cal over the summer. I personally love programming and computer engineering in general an ga tech would be my best in state option. But it hurts to see the kids who were born here and had proper guidance as to what to do and not to do are now seeing the benefits. All having 4 aps and a lot of extracurricular activities. But for me right now is not about blaming people, because the only person to blame is me. However, i would love to do something to get me to that college, if thats taking pre cal over the summer, then ill do it. I just dont know if with my current circumstances i can look appealing to any good college. Dont get me wring i have never got a grade under an A. And im just taking ap classes which shouldve started last year. And as far as extracurricular goes, ive only done a year of soccer. So now im just looking at my self with all of these regrets.
It depends on how behind you are with mathematics.
In math, the important part is being strong with your building blocks / foundations.
If you can’t do Algebra 2, 1, Geometry or whatever before properly, then you shouldn’t be touching the next subject. You will only fall more and more behind and get more lost.
What I would do if I were you is keep studying math everyday AND in the summer, self study pre-calculus. Then once Fall hits, you take pre-calculus then and destroy the curve.
Review before hand and get familiar with materials THEN take the course. It will also give you a confidence booster and you can properly enjoy your summer without getting too stressed.
That said, if you are super confident with yourself, then ya, go ahead. I don’t know how behind you are and if your grade was never under an A, I’m sure you are underestimating yourself greatly (or your school gives highly inflated grades or both).
Personally, I wouldn’t worry much about college looking back and try to build those foundations properly before moving on.
That said, if you want some challenging thought provoking math textbooks that you will struggle hard but would be worth it (the solutions guide is amazing in and in of itself), try giving The Art of Problem Solving textbooks a try. I will warn you though, if you aren’t good at math, doing Algebra II Art of Problem Solving long after finishing Algebra II in school will still be a very challenging task.
Their pre-calculus book I hear is also pretty damn good (Art of Problem Solving generally creates top notch textbooks geared towards the most talented students in the nation so yes, the content is going to be very very challenging but if you are someone who doesn’t give up fast, you got all summer. Why not?). For free E-books, there’s also Stitz & Zeager which is also very good. Precalculus with Limits with Larson is also an option. Honestly, just buy like 2 pre-calculus books and work on them together.
This will help you develop a mathematical perspective that could be greatly helpful in your future endeavors.
Having stated all that, do you have any plans for the summer honestly? Most students don’t do anything productive and having 24 hours a day of free time means you can do quite a lot. You can honestly dominate Pre-Calculus alone in school with that much free time if you aren’t doing anything particular. And your family situation, I’m sorry but the real world does not care. That’s the unfortunate reality we live in and don’t be too rough on yourself.
Just don’t exhaust yourself before anything.
Thanks again, and no i dont have any particular plans except summer homework from the classes that im planing to take. I mean im not behind on math, its that there are people who are more advanced, and well i wanna look and be as good as possible to show the colleges my capabilies. Also planing on doing some extracurricular and service hours over summer but yea no specific plans. Its just so much to worry about all at once. I difinitely appreciate you and the things you have said. Thank you so very much
Actually, you are not behind at all. Those who are in pre-calc right now happens to be in a more accelerated path, you are only 1 class behind in math, and that is not bad. HERE IS WHY(I am a sophomore CS major): I was on that path! I took pre-calc my junior year in high school, took Calc 1 my senior year. HOWEVER, in order to take Calc 2 your first semester in college, you need either a good enough AP score for AP Calc AB (which is the one that your peers will take I think) or some kind of dual-college credit that is transferable to your intended college. I got a 3 on my AP Calc AB, which is not enough as my university requires you to have a 4 or 5 to go ahead into Calc 2, so I had to retake Calc 1 my first semester in college. The thing is, even if you have a 4 or 5 on the AP exam for Calc, some universities (usually prestigious or high-league) will want you to re-take Calc 1 despite your AP score as some believe that an AP course is not equivalent to their college course. So even if you are at your peer’s accelerated pace and got a good AP score at the end of your senior year, depending on where you go to university, you might end up having to retake Calc I.
If your concern is whether you are looking good enough for college applications, your ACT outweighs all other categories. You being 1 math class behind is nothing to worry about, as most CS majors will take Calc 1 their first semester in college. The AP score needed to skip straight into Calc 2 is a bonus, not a detriment to your getting accepted into college.
I agree with a lot of what the people here said. In my high school for example the highest math offered was Algebra 2 (yes really), and it was not taught well, and I was not the best student. So when I started college I was placed into Intermediate Algebra, so the equivalent of Algebra 2. And I am more than glad that I did this. Having the building blocks as stable as possible will help you in the long run, the time you take in school should not matter the most. What should matter though is that you understand the information and are able to apply it, essentially that you learn it.
I felt bad because I got placed in a class meant for high school students, but It doesn’t matter. In a year ill be in Calc 1, and things just take time. That’s normal and must be learned.
Luckily for me, I am in a cohort which allows me to take accelerated math courses to get to Calculus 1 in a year.
Algebra 2, Geometry, Trig and finally pre-calc.
Best to start off with the proper knowledge and prerequisites for the class so you can succeed, because math is sequential, you can’t really miss out on the foundational ideas. Unlike other subjects in where it can be figured out a lot easier and is not necessarily sequential.
Math is an art, master it. No matter how long it takes, you’ll eventually be at the same level as your peers.
My professor from MIT (School doesn’t matter, but if I add it then it gives a sense of prestige and it has more “credibility”, but the school shouldn’t matter anyway, good advice is good advice regardless.
He was the man who made me conclude that math takes time, and skipping around without an order and sequence will mess you up.
Hopefully whatever I said may possibly help you, I really hope so. This is an amazing website with input by thousands of people, take advantage of the knowledge 