Do you like food? Of course you do. And so do most of us. It tastes delicious, makes the tummy happy and is a reason to engage in conversations with friends.
Do you like to cook? Maybe you do, or maybe you don’t. Regardless, the people who like to eat far outnumber the people who like to cook.
Now to a more interesting question: Do you like science?
Many freshmen enter Harvard (and other colleges) thinking they like science, only to realize that the science they liked did not resemble the science they were introduced to in college.
For some it can even be a painful experience to redefine themselves from future scientists to something else. Why is this pattern so common?
Read more…
These are my experiences about learning, written from the perspective of a math student. I do think that my advice is applicable to other theory intense subjects such as physics and economics.
So I used to be the smart guy in high school. Doing well in math competitions, not listening in class and all that stuff. Basically I was a smart jerk. Needless to say, when I got to Harvard, I wasn’t the smartest in my class anymore. My freshman year, I enrolled in math 25, the honors class for math majors. I did pretty well in that class, but had to work really hard. Now, looking back at that experience, I see a couple of things that, given the chance, I would have done differently.
One could say that I was good at math, but not at learning math, if that makes sense. In high school, the emphasize for me had been at problem solving, while math studies in college are much more theory oriented.
How do you efficiently learn so much theory?
Read more…
Recent Comments