I have a kinda similar story. I've always had the ability to learn something really, really quickly. Like 4-8 hours I could learn almost any technical course. Calculus was different though. You couldn't just learn how to visualize things and learn the rules and apply them. Integration couldn't be "flow charted" you had to just recognize the pattern!
So I'm up all night before the final trying to get through this material. Then I hit the Taylor and Maclaurin method of turning every function into a polynomial. It was difficult to learn, but at least it was straightforward once you got the trick of it.
Due to coffee related stomach sickness the final was rescheduled anyway so I learned a good deal of the patterns for the integration but what I ended up doing was using Taylor series if I got stuck since I could just convert it to polynomials, do the integration, then try to convert the infinite series back into a reasonable looking function. If not, no worries, it's still technically the same function so maybe I lose a few points here or there, better than nothing.
Oh and there was a bomb threat during that retake. I made sure to walk right next to the prof while the other 8 people writing with me held back and essentially cheated. I asked the prof why he was letting them do it and he said "Oh, I'm just going to deduct 15% from everyone's exam but yours".
Really dodged a bullet there, lol. Kinda miss university at times.
So I'm up all night before the final trying to get through this material. Then I hit the Taylor and Maclaurin method of turning every function into a polynomial. It was difficult to learn, but at least it was straightforward once you got the trick of it.
Due to coffee related stomach sickness the final was rescheduled anyway so I learned a good deal of the patterns for the integration but what I ended up doing was using Taylor series if I got stuck since I could just convert it to polynomials, do the integration, then try to convert the infinite series back into a reasonable looking function. If not, no worries, it's still technically the same function so maybe I lose a few points here or there, better than nothing.
Oh and there was a bomb threat during that retake. I made sure to walk right next to the prof while the other 8 people writing with me held back and essentially cheated. I asked the prof why he was letting them do it and he said "Oh, I'm just going to deduct 15% from everyone's exam but yours".
Really dodged a bullet there, lol. Kinda miss university at times.