- #1
Yawzheek
- 12
- 1
I guess I should have done this earlier, but late is better than never, right?
I joined, mostly because I'm interested in pursuing science and mathematics further than what I learned in college. I went to an EXTREMELY poor community college, but I had an amazing physics instructor that got me interested in the subject. I was enrolled in an "engineering technologies" course, which translates to, "applied engineering," which better translates to, "the relation to engineering is minimal, and we're training you to be a maintenance man." Trust me, I was reminded of that daily in courses by my instructors, but what can you do? It was the only school I could afford, and I was a GED recipient.
Well, long story short, I skipped the, "applied mathematics and physics" courses, and went for the real courses. If the above didn't give you a good idea of what "applied" meant, it basically meant "conceptual." So in a few years, I went from never being enrolled in any real science course or a mathematics curriculum that involved letters to passing a simple algebraic physics course and precalculus. Was even pretty good at it, if you can believe that.
Unfortunately for me, my grants expired, and I couldn't afford to continue schooling without going into serious debt, so I let all my previous knowledge lapse. Big mistake, because a significant part of what I used to know is now often vague, and now that I want to get into calculus based physics with a textbook that states a simple high school calculus course is sufficient, much of the algebra, precalculus, and trigonometry has faded quite a bit. That's my biggest regret - I should have kept on my mathematics regardless, because had I done that, I wouldn't have near the problems now.
So at the end of the day, I'm a 31-year-old man, not enrolled in any university, that's really just trying to learn more for fun, I guess you might say. I'm going to ask stupid questions, they'll probably be math-based, and you'll likely be annoyed. If it makes you feel any better, if you answer any of my questions, you most certainly will not be helping dumb-down education by providing test/homework answers for some lazy person that doesn't want to learn. Trust me when I say, I've done the work before, and you're probably just refreshing something I forgot, and I understand how annoying it is to help someone that doesn't care or want to try. I used to tutor the math students in my school for anything from basic college math (codeword for "has difficulty with simple arithmetic") to Algebra II, and I know how infuriating it is to have someone ask you to do their homework for them while they nodded their heads and pretended to understand, because that's exactly what they asked me to do.
So that's me. Some older dude with a bit of background and lots of dumb questions.
I joined, mostly because I'm interested in pursuing science and mathematics further than what I learned in college. I went to an EXTREMELY poor community college, but I had an amazing physics instructor that got me interested in the subject. I was enrolled in an "engineering technologies" course, which translates to, "applied engineering," which better translates to, "the relation to engineering is minimal, and we're training you to be a maintenance man." Trust me, I was reminded of that daily in courses by my instructors, but what can you do? It was the only school I could afford, and I was a GED recipient.
Well, long story short, I skipped the, "applied mathematics and physics" courses, and went for the real courses. If the above didn't give you a good idea of what "applied" meant, it basically meant "conceptual." So in a few years, I went from never being enrolled in any real science course or a mathematics curriculum that involved letters to passing a simple algebraic physics course and precalculus. Was even pretty good at it, if you can believe that.
Unfortunately for me, my grants expired, and I couldn't afford to continue schooling without going into serious debt, so I let all my previous knowledge lapse. Big mistake, because a significant part of what I used to know is now often vague, and now that I want to get into calculus based physics with a textbook that states a simple high school calculus course is sufficient, much of the algebra, precalculus, and trigonometry has faded quite a bit. That's my biggest regret - I should have kept on my mathematics regardless, because had I done that, I wouldn't have near the problems now.
So at the end of the day, I'm a 31-year-old man, not enrolled in any university, that's really just trying to learn more for fun, I guess you might say. I'm going to ask stupid questions, they'll probably be math-based, and you'll likely be annoyed. If it makes you feel any better, if you answer any of my questions, you most certainly will not be helping dumb-down education by providing test/homework answers for some lazy person that doesn't want to learn. Trust me when I say, I've done the work before, and you're probably just refreshing something I forgot, and I understand how annoying it is to help someone that doesn't care or want to try. I used to tutor the math students in my school for anything from basic college math (codeword for "has difficulty with simple arithmetic") to Algebra II, and I know how infuriating it is to have someone ask you to do their homework for them while they nodded their heads and pretended to understand, because that's exactly what they asked me to do.
So that's me. Some older dude with a bit of background and lots of dumb questions.