Should I Retake Calculus I?

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I started Calc I this semester, but I failed the first two tests leading me to drop the course. The problem is that it's not that I don't undertand the material. It's that the professor puts problems on the tests to throw you off. He makes things more difficult than they really are. He doesn't have any type of test preparation. He just assigns us homework and we have the test. I have no idea what to study. There is no review before the test.

Should I retake the course with another professor?


Should I just change my major or just give up on school?

Retake the class with another professor. Some people who are very bright just aren't very good teachers. It sounds like you got one of those. You might ask around with some other people who have taken the course already if they can give you some advice on which professors are more effective in the classroom.

Do you need the course for your major? If so, then you should probably look at retaking it. It seems rather drastic to change majors because of one bad experience.

Yeah retake the class. Are you a visual thinker? If so I can sort you out with loads of resources that I used when I was doing calculus. One of the most useful tools I ever came across was a function grapher. You put in any function and it will plot it on a graph for you. I had no idea what the hell was going on in calculus until I got to see what all the equations actually looked like on a graph. Thats when it all started coming together and I realised how simple the stuff I was learning actually is. Also mnemonics made memorising all that abstract crap a whole lot easier. For example for the chain rule I just memorized the word "yuux", for the product rule I memorised "vux uvx" and now I'm incapable of forgetting them.

I need the course for my major. It is required.



@cni, I know the material. It's just the professor puts problems on the tests that we never went over in class.


I think that I'm going to take the course over again with a different professor.

Use KhanAcademy and WolframAlpha, and chances are you'll pass. Calculus II is ridiculously hard though

Its all about the professor. I use ratemyprofessor at the beginning of the term to scope out good teachers. I'm currently in Calculus I. I'm terrible at math and I've got an A so far. Of course, I've been studying my brains out...but the professor is amazing as well....very helpful and straightforward.