<p>I don’t know if this is a myth, but is it true that the Math/Science Academic help center at your university is for people who are in arts and only struggling with the general reqs?</p>
<p>So what I am asking is, do people who major math, physics, chem, etc go to those centers for help? Like are those places for “inferior” students who are too dumb/lazy to do their work?</p>
<p>Do smart people go there too?</p>
<p>That is an awful stereotype. Obviously if you are struggling, you should go. I was an artist most of my life and math was one of my best subjects. Go figure. </p>
<p>Most of the tutors will be math and science majors in upper level courses that have been through more than just the general ed. courses, so they will be able to help.</p>
<p>I am a math and physics major, and I use it often. It is a great resource and there is no shame in going. It has definitely helped a lot better than trying to tackle the material and textbook by yourself.</p>
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From what I have seem, help centers are usually set up to help with lower-level courses. Not because they are for “dumb” or “lazy” students, but because there’s not enough demand for a tutor on general relativity or complex analysis or physical chemistry to justify the expense of hiring highly-trained individuals to be available in a help center for large stretches of time. The limited availability of TAs and instructor’s office hours seem to serve the needs of most science majors just fine.</p>
<p>@Majjestic, are you at the top of your class? I know this sounds really despicable as a human being, but I am really really afraid of letting others know that “hey even he needs help! He isn’t smart at all!”</p>
<p>^… no one will think that.</p>
<p>We have an ME help center that people use for help. I don’t think anyone would say a mechanical engineering student isn’t smart because he is using the help room.</p>
<p>That being said my buddy was telling me about a girl that came in there last week and was literally crying because she was having a hard time. Don’t do that.</p>
<p>There is a physics student lounge at my school where the physics majors spend hours talking to the professor and grad-level tutors about homework, and these are people <em>past</em> the calc-based introductory physics sequence, not first-year sociology majors. I I’ve known other STEM-majors who spent a lot of time getting tutoring for their classes from the teachers. It doesn’t make a lot of sense (from an administrative point of view) for doctoral candidates in physics to help people with Intro College Algebra because there are not nearly as many doctoral candidates in physics as there are people who passed Intro College Algebra with an A and are thus qualified to help people in it. When I was a peer tutor, as long as you had passed a given class with at least a B, you could tutor in it. I tutored somebody in a physics class I had taken only the previous quarter.</p>
<p>So they may not be in the general math/science help center (because they don’t need help with the intro math and science classes that the tutors there are qualified to tute) but they generally <em>do</em> need help with the higher-level courses they are at and find it elsewhere.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for that crying girl. Getting a STEM degree can be like getting a drink of water from a fire hose, too many concepts in too little time. And it can make you feel stupid and feel you’ve hit the limit of what your mind is capable of, when it may just be that your learning style is different from what your teacher and textbooks put out or that you haven’t had enough sleep or haven’t studied enough or just need to take a rest.</p>
<p>Not for the faint of heart</p>
<p>I work at a tutoring center on my campus. While most of our walk-in support is for general chemistry, general physics, and math courses calculus and below, we also have appointments in plenty of upper level classes. </p>
<p>I’m a senior chemistry major and I split my time evenly between the walk-in general chemistry center, which mostly gets pre-med and engineering students, and scheduled weekly appointments. The appointments I teach range from basic statistics to non-science major biology to physical chemistry, so I would say that while we do focus on lower level classes, tutoring in upper level classes is often available as well.</p>
<p>And I can say that I’ve used the tutoring center myself, for an upper level biochemistry course. It’s definitely not for the lazy- we won’t do anyone’s work for them and we’re encouraged to use Socratic methods as much as possible.</p>