#did kinda bad in classes i think but i DEF got an A in calc 2 so fuck everything else im winning

[greetingsfromuranus]

Man cartoons are making me self depreciating again I need to go draw my own characters for a bit oof

[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.