A question for Neapol1s, Lizzardfire, etc...

si1verdrake
Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:43:13 +0000

how do you know you can actually solve a problem on your own, after you did it in group?
To make it a bit clearer, when someone sees a solution, he thinks “Oh man, it’s so easy; I could definitely solve it”, and forgets that only a couple of minutes ago he was about to jump off a building…



Speaking as a Junior, I’ve got a bit of experience with this. Personally, I tend to sort of intuitively leap to a starting point for a problem, which is great if your intuition is correct, but when it’s not, you tend to spend a long, long time smashing your head against the problem until you get that “ah ha! I should have done it THIS way!”
Whereas in a group, hopefully at least one person started it the right way. And (for me at least… this can be harder to apply in some subjects) once I’ve seen how to do a problem the right way once, I can generally remember that for that type of problem, I should be looking at it this way/using this theorem, and so forth.

Also, I generally try to get the first line or two of the problem from someone, then solve it for myself once I’m heading in the right direction. Plus, core chem and bio were the subjects I most did the “oh, so that’s how it’s done” thing, and to be honest, I didn’t care much about learning the material. I have an irrational hatred of chemistry as a subject and a perfectly rational hatred of Bi 1 as a class. Thus, the “okay, I’ve got answers that I kind of understand and could duplicate enough to pass the test” method worked just fine.