27 January 2011

More on Starting Calculus

Yes, Calculus. Well, I dropped it last semester before it even began, because I was busy getting pregnant and being a little hormonal. The first trimester was rough on me, and I'm glad I dropped my classes, because there's no way I would have been able to give them the attention they required.

But now I'm a week in, and so far feeling ok. I think the hard part will be remembering all of the Trig I crammed into my brain over the 8-week summer semester and promptly forgot during the fall break. Limits, I get, and according to my professor, that's all Calc I really is. Derivatives and Integrals are just fancy limits.

I used iTunes U to help me prepare for the class (there are a couple of calculus semester lectures there), and now I'll be using it to fill in the gaps left by my professor, who tends to ramble and go off-track and not always explain everything completely well.

I'm still a bit nervous - the majority of the grade is TWO tests (midterm and final exam), he doesn't really award partial credit, and I'm always screwing up something stupid in my algebra when I do complex problems. But I think I'll understand the concepts ok, and that's the most important thing here.