He highlights one of the problems I had with mathematics when I reached University. I was in the top 2% of students in the first few months. I considered it a trivial subject. "Here's a class of problems, here's how you solve them." Easy peasy. Then we started integrating and differentiating forms of problems we weren't familiar with. All of a sudden, everything we were taught didn't seem to apply any more.
Our lecturer told us: "I can see that some of you are struggling and are confused. You want to know how you become skilled at solving these problems? Forget your social life. Solve every problem in that 900 page textbook of yours. When you've done that, come to me and I'll give you another 900 page text book and finish that as well."
In one fell swoop Mathematics had lost all its appeal. I switched to Applied Math and aced it.
On the other hand, my brother actually followed this advice. For an entire year he spent a few hours every night doing Calculus till he recognized every different form they could conceivably throw at him. I asked him how he knew how to solve some problems. He said he didn't. It was all just memorization and recognition.
I can't understand how anyone would decide to lose their social life for anything. But then, perhaps I am simply not the right person to become a scholar. Sure, I can put an hour or two a day of personal time keeping up to date, but I wouldn't see myself going "alright, let's waste an entire year of personal time for non paid formations" ... If I really have to do some learning, I'm going to try to do it through projects which I am paid to do.
It was much the same for me with quantum physics. The theory was fine, but the maths was just so much memorisation that I completely lost all enthusiasm. I still get the chills thinking about 4 hour exams with only a single question on them that we pretty much just had to memorise the answer for in advance.
"As a young woman with a yen for learning language and no money or skills to speak of, I couldn’t afford to go to college (college loans weren’t then in the picture). So I launched directly from high school into the Army."
Our lecturer told us: "I can see that some of you are struggling and are confused. You want to know how you become skilled at solving these problems? Forget your social life. Solve every problem in that 900 page textbook of yours. When you've done that, come to me and I'll give you another 900 page text book and finish that as well."
In one fell swoop Mathematics had lost all its appeal. I switched to Applied Math and aced it.
On the other hand, my brother actually followed this advice. For an entire year he spent a few hours every night doing Calculus till he recognized every different form they could conceivably throw at him. I asked him how he knew how to solve some problems. He said he didn't. It was all just memorization and recognition.