mathematical musings

I have probably mentioned on here that I'm taking an algebra course this semester. In order to get into the business program at SFU, I'm required to take Calculus.. I also need it in order to take any more computer science courses, which I think I would like to do although I know they will be challenging.

Anyway, I have gladly not thought about math at all for over a decade, and here I am being forced to relearn it. The math I had retained from school was painfully basic. Although I can balance a chequebook, I couldn't even remember how to do long division or how to work with fractions when I started doing this back in July. I spent some discouraging hours sitting in Chapters bookstore looking through some incomprehensible high school math workbooks and realized I need to really go back to basics... so I approached some teachers at Megan's school and asked for recommendations about where to start. I bought some books online and spent the summer forcing my brain to think numerically again. Fractions... decimals... multiplication tables... it was all incredibly painful. :-)

It's still going to be quite a while before I can take the Calculus course I need. You see, in order to take Calculus, I need to pass pre-Calculus. And in order to enter pre-Calculus, I need this "basic Algebra" course. It's not even a for-credit course... and there are no classes. They tell you what textbook to buy, give you a stack of unit tests and away you go. Although there are tutors available most days in the algebra lab at school, they're shared with many other students and as far as I can tell, all of them are taking far more complex courses than I am. This semester has been a lesson in humility as I sit in a room with a bunch of people who are at least ten years younger than me who are all doing very advanced math while I sit there struggling over my basic algebra. Anyway, I'm getting there and it's really been a good experience for me to do this. I'm not used to having to work to understand something and probably needed a dose of humility to start off my university experience :-) Unfortunately, I probably won't finish this course in time to take pre-Calculus next semester, but I hope the extra time I'm investing will help to give me a really good grounding before I approach these daunting math courses in the future.