#bc hes taking intro and me and my friend are in intermediate

[ambersky0319]

It's honestly exciting having a friend taking the same creative writing workshop class as me!

[juicezone]

hi!!! sorry it took me so long im home now uhh ward with ✈️🎻🎶💯💤🔺🌴💛🍛🤩? (feel free to leave any out if that's too many!!)

HI FRIEND also congrats on getting 2 of the ones that I had instant art ideas for <3 Under the cut bc its long!

✈️ AIRPLANE — does your oc like traveling, or do they consider themselves a more homey person? Ward defintely doesn't mind travelling! And honestly, most of the people he considers friend and/or family are on the same ship as him, so it's a home away from home :>

🎻 VIOLIN — does your oc play any instruments? what is their skill level (beginner/intermediate/advanced/virtuoso/etc)?

Ward: I can play a mean Kazoo! (DOOT) Bones: Thought we got rid of those -_-

🎶 MUSICAL NOTES — what type of music does your oc like? do they listen to music very often? When regressed: He listens to cartoon intro songs! He's especially fond of "older cartoon" intros (aka intros from now lol) like Magic School Bus or Wild Kratts When not regressed: Rock music and it's varients (punk rock, indie rock, ect) His fav song is "Birdhouse in your Soul" :D

💯 HUNDRED POINTS SYMBOL — share three random facts about your oc that others may not know. 1: Ward's handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Like if you asked him to handwrite something and then read it a month later, he probably wouldn't be able to :P 2: He doesn't actually have a hairbrush or a comb and it drives some of his friends up the wall. He has perpetual bedhead and when he takes a shower he just shakes his head like a dog before drying off 3: Ward can't swim and he refuses to admit it, he just claims he doesn't go swimming bc fish and people pee in the water

💤 SLEEPING SIGN — is your oc a light sleeper or a heavy sleeper? how are their sleeping habits? he's a A literal nightmare to get to sleep when regressed, which is lowkey funny bc when he's not regressed, Ward can and will fall asleep most places easily. He's a pretty heavy sleeper, but a major night owl, and needs noise to fall asleep! (he usually just puts on recorded weather documentaries or those rain playlists. nerd)

regressed, he usually has to be put to sleep like 2 or three times before he finally goes to bed :P

🔺 RED TRIANGLE POINTED UP — does your oc know how to use any weapons? Like most Starfleet officers, he knows how to use a Phaser and some general self-defense! he tends to steer away from fights tho, he's a science officer not a security officer for a reason :P (he will throw hands if u argue weather w him tho)

🌴 PALM TREE — does your oc have a green thumb? do they enjoy gardening?

Ward: Sorry I killed the plant, Spock Spock:.... Plant: (Is fake)

💛 YELLOW HEART — how many languages does your oc speak? what language(s) are they learning, if any? Technically, thanks to the Handy Dandy Universal Communicator technology of Star Trek, Ward speaks pretty much any language in the system!

🍛 CURRY AND RICE — what does your oc's typical dinner look like? do they usually eat dinner? He generally defaults to whatever his friends are eating and whatever vegetable is forced upon him, otherwise he defaults to quick and easy to eat finger food! He's not overly picky, but he's not a huge fan of like. non-deli meat meats. Like he'll eat turkey sandwiches and stuff but porkchops or steak? Not usually a fan. Beef stew tho, he will decimate a bowl of good beef stew with bread.

🤩 FACE WITH STARRY EYES — is your oc a planner, or are they more spontaneous in their actions?

Ward: my friend (Bones) is on a cruise so while he's gone i'm gonna cut the sleeves off all my shirts Kirk: Why Ward: he's pretty much 85% of my impulse control

[sevenfactorial]

Conveniently, I did take a screen shot bc the whole ask wasn’t appearing while I was I was typing which I found displeasing.

I had a bit more math exposure than most people in high school. I was able to go through multivar calc and diff eqs my last year (less intense but still closely following typical university curriculum, in particular, the local university’s which is where I’m at now) and had some proof exposure from doing math competitions. I also didn’t plunge straight into math since I started as a CS major/math minor (multivar first semester, discrete math for cs majors second, both of which definitely were not easy for me even if they went well in the end). The amount of math I took at a time rather steadily increased from there so I never had like, a shock sort of moment which was kind of more luck than anything else.

Just about everyone who does math says it’s very hard. I think that anyone who says it’s easy hasn’t been sufficiently challenged. For one of my friends, it took him going to a top grad program to be sufficiently challenged but most people get it plenty quickly in undergrad. I never had a particularly bad shock but I am definitely of the opinion that Math Is Hard and Absurd but I’m doing it anyways. So you’re far from alone and there are Real Life Mathematicians in my sample so clearly it doesn’t keep you from success.

Basically, I don’t think finding math much harder now than in high school is a reason to quit. Persistence is actually a huge factor of success at research math especially, just as much or more than natural ability. My success in classes and research is less reliant on my natural intuition (what the fuck is natural intuition about higher dim abstract objects anyways? I’m kinda concern if you have any tbh) and more on the fact that I’m willing to work on a problem for 4+ hrs.

That said, if you have been studying a lot but still are having trouble, then yes, trying out new strategies is important.

These are mostly general enough that they can probably apply to whatever class, whether more intro or intermediate and whatever field but I can’t guarantee it. I’m mostly thinking intro-to-upper-level-stuff like linear alg or odes and beginning upper-level undergrad like intro to abstract alg or adv calc.

The obvious, typical, but really useful advice is talk to people. Your professor/TA is a good place to start but talking to other people as well might be a good idea. So this includes classmates, older students, other faculty. I find collaborating with peers extremely important to my understanding because you can help each other find problems and fix them. Getting help from other people can also be useful because they’ll probably explains things a bit differently than your professor and maybe a different explanation will click much better for you. Like I could not understand finite fields and their notation for over two weeks despite the constant lectures until one of my friends (actually a classmate at the time but he had previous experience) explained it to me differently while we were doing homework.

When you’re studying, sometimes its a good idea to make sure you’re not getting too caught up on details. They are important (for some fields more than others, I’m not sure this advice works for analysis for one) but if you don’t understand the more general idea of a concept or the general structure of a proof, knowing the details probably won’t help that much either (a vague answer is usually enough for partial credit too). I focus on definitions, theorems, and common proof structures (if multiple proofs during a unit feel similar, you probably want to know how it works).

Usually, when I just don’t understand something despite trying multiple times, I will go through the def/theorem/proof/example/whatever very slowly while writing down just everything. Basically my internal monologue as I think through it. I find this very frequently helps me untangle things, at least enough that now I can go to someone and be like, I have a question instead of just, I don’t get this at all. I don’t think this would work for everyone but it’s worth giving a shot.

Some less-solely-academic advice is make sure you have a support network. Multiple preferably. One in your department is the most important in my opinion. I don’t know how I would have fared without other students to commiserate with and faculty to give advice (I’d probably still be a cs double major bc the support I got in the math department was a big draw for me). One of my friends (a MA major at a different uni) isn’t involved in her math department and I do know of a lot of majors I have class with but never really see otherwise but the support has seriously been helpful. Of course, mathblr is also filled with great people and I love it too though it’s definitely different from having something irl. Having friends and family outside math is also important bc it’s probably not healthy to be mired in math 100% of the time.

Another thing is possibly consider getting checked for any mental or emotional things. Obviously I have no clue what your situation is but sometimes it is really tricky to identify genuine problems when you’ve been facing them your entire life but if you can address it, it might have a really big impact. In general, take care of your mental and emotional health. A crisis is most certainly not gonna help anything.