Struggling With Science Courses - Need Advice

gutter
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:09:24 +0000

What are your studying habits? Is it possible that your are only reading the textbook but not really processing the info and understanding the big picture and concepts?



As of right now I go through this process…Note that I have to do significantly less for non-chemistry/physics courses:

1) Read/Highlight chapter
2) Convert highlighted chapter into handwritten notes
3) Using notes and the chapter as reference, work through the recommended problems at the end of the chapter (if no problems are recommended by the prof I’ll do random ones in each section within the chapter).
4) Check the answers to each question in the back of the book or in the solutions manual.

The thing is, I usually work through the problems in the book (our Chemistry book) just fine even if I don’t get through them blazingly fast. But I can’t for the life of me figure out some of the questions that the prof asks on the quizzes, even after I’m done taking the quiz itself. They’re just different somehow. They require different forms of logical reasoning.



Also since both chemistry and physics are math intensive courses, perhaps it is your math skill that is bringing you down in these areas?



Actually, interestingly enough, my math skills seems really high, and I’m talking about everything from addition to algebra to calculus. I’ve never had a problem with even high level math courses, in fact I found them quite fun and easy. I was talking with my friend about this problem I’m having and we came to the conclusion that as much of a contradiction that it seems to be, I’m good at math but bad at applied logic. That is to say, give me rules and I can manipulate them to answer your question, but give me a situation where specific words come with specific implications and I can’t connect the dots.

To put it another way, I can tell you that wood floats in water, but if you asked me on a test, “A furniture company sells chairs cut from the local trees with no extra materials added to the final product. If you put the chair in a pool with normal water density of 1g/mL, would the chair float or sink?” I would very likely be stumped. If you then explained the answer by saying, “The chair is made out of trees so it’s made out of wood, and wood floats in water,” then I’d likely respond with, “Well yeah, but how was I supposed to know that that was what you were getting at?”

Let me know if that’s still confusing. I have a hard time explaining it.



Math, Science, and just about anything in High school is very easy. In college, it actually starts to get hard (any subject, really). A lot of people ace Physics in HS, but how many would make it as Physics majors? not many.

Science majors aren’t that lucrative, unless you mean Engineering or Computer Science. Seriously, I’m a science major and most Chem/Bio/Physics/Neuro/Biochem majors I know don’t really know what the hell we’re gonna do after graduation, unless it’s Med/Grad/Dental school. What the hell are you supposed to do with a Chem degree anyway? Only on CC have I ever heard sci majors are lucrative. By “science majors” they mean Comp Sci and Engineering. Many science majors go into Finance, where they do well simply because they’re smart, but their major has little to do with it.

The lucrative majors are Economics, Finance and Business, so study those if you’re looking to make money. They’re relatively easy and lead to jobs. If a job is what you’re after, study Economics, not BioChem!

If you like Chem, stick it out and see how it goes, but Intro Chem is generally pretty easy - advanced courses are a lot harder!



That’s the thing, part of my concern comes with the fact that even in high school (taking AP classes) I felt like I was behind the curve. The same people I helped tutor in Sophomore year Chemistry were shouting out answers off the top of their heads that I had no clue how they got to. It literally felt like over the summer they all got together and took a full course on the stuff and now they were just in school rehearsing what they already knew.

I’m not implying that there’s some secret out there that other people have that I don’t that will magically make me good at Chemistry, I’m just trying to describe my situation.

And when I said I wanted to take a science because I wanted a job, I mean I know it won’t be lucrative per say but I think you’d agree that my job prospects are a lot better under BioChem than they are under, say, Philosophy?

Thanks again for the responses everyone.