Board 8 > Thinking about taking some college courses

(+) Yeah! (+)

Years ago, I finished calculus 2 and chemistry 1. I ended up dropping it to get my actual real job, but Ive been thinking about going back. The problem is that Im not sure I remember it all well enough to succeed. I remember intro chemistry being very easy and Calc 2 being very hard. I cant retake the classes, so Im a little indecisive right now. I looked at some precalc stuff today and only remembered like 40% of it offhand, and that stuff is way easier than the higher levels of math.

Not sure where Im going with this, I guess this is just a BlogFAQs post.

It's not a very exciting subject, but I'd say the most useful college math course is linear algebra (it comes up literally everywhere). It's also pretty easy and probably doesn't involve calculus unless they have a unit on basic differential equations.

the answer to all this stuff depends on the "why"- your motivation. you can't succeed or fail if you don't have a goal, so if you don't have a goal just do whatever you want

do you want to switch careers? would it simply feel good to have an official degree you skipped out on earlier in life? do you want to prove you're "good enough" to do the next class? do you want to learn something interesting? do you want to network/hang out with college professors and students? etc

your financial situation might also get taken into consideration. there are tutors you can pay to get you caught up on stuff you haven't thought about in a while

Anagram posted...

I cant retake the classes, so Im a little indecisive right now.

As in, you are not prepared, or they wont let you?

banananor posted...

the answer to all this stuff depends on the "why"- your motivation. you can't succeed or fail if you don't have a goal, so if you don't have a goal just do whatever you want

do you want to switch careers? would it simply feel good to have an official degree you skipped out on earlier in life? do you want to prove you're "good enough" to do the next class? do you want to learn something interesting? do you want to network/hang out with college professors and students? etc

your financial situation might also get taken into consideration. there are tutors you can pay to get you caught up on stuff you haven't thought about in a while

My financial situation is stable, but I was thinking of switching careers. Im not terribly satisfied with my current one.

redrocket posted...

As in, you are not prepared, or they wont let you?

They wont let you retake it, not that Im sure I would.

Why are you specifying specific college classes? Individual classes don't mean much - they are just pieces of a diploma or degree that actually matters. Whats your overall education history and what are your overall goals?

I'm under the impression that you had some kind of English/language focused degree like writing or literature or something. Is that not the case?

CoolCly posted...

Why are you specifying specific college classes? Individual classes don't mean much - they are just pieces of a diploma or degree that actually matters. Whats your overall education history and what are your overall goals?

I'm under the impression that you had some kind of English/language focused degree like writing or literature or something. Is that not the case?

Youre correct, I have a masters degree. My overall goal would be to return to college and pursue another degree, but my exact plan is up in the air, it sort of depends on what careers are available for someone in their thirties.

Anagram posted...

I was thinking of switching careers. Im not terribly satisfied with my current one.

I would be extremely careful with this line of thinking. There's no guarantee that a career you switch to would still satisfy you.

Anagram posted...

My overall goal would be to return to college and pursue another degree, but my exact plan is up in the air, it sort of depends on what careers are available for someone in their thirties.

Yeah, I would say to figure this out first for what really resonates with you. I'd say that any career is viable at your age, you don't need to get too hung up about age. Heck, you may not even need to go back to college if you go around networking the right connections.

If the goal were Chemistry or Chem E they'd need the degree.

Speaking as someone who did Math/ECE/CS, so take the following with a grain of salt.

First thing I want to say is there's /loads/ more online resources than there were ten years ago. I think pre-Calc and Calc I are useful to know (up to a point- you'll probably shave stuff off the top re sequences and series and not care too much). If you're concerned about not knowing what you need to, there're Coursera courses and online courses through other colleges. Also, just working your way through a textbook (some are much friendlier than others! Legit look at a variety, including ones aimed at high schoolers. There are, uh, ways that this process can be, shall we say, cheap) would put you ahead of virtually everyone else.

If your concern's Calc II, I would say the concepts are a lot more important than the actual calculation (i.e. designing the integral, not carrying it out). In the real world, automatic integration and approximation can take you pretty far so long as you know what you want to happen (enter: TI-Nspire CX CAS or what have you). FWIW I've got a math degree and I have a strong dislike for Calc II (stronger dislike than pretty much every other math class I've ever taken other then maybe Intro Analysis I), so you're not alone on this.

I knew people in their 30s who switched careers for a second major in ECE in undergrad who did great. I would have a couple of clear job goals in mind before diving into this, however. It's hard to know ahead of time what you'll appreciate doing necessarily, but having some specific kinds of job postings you're targeting make it a lot easier when you reach the end (if you're not already doing this).

Last piece of advice is that talking to people in those jobs is always helpful, if you can arrange that.