22 May 2009

Regrets

I spent most of the day yesterday bemoaning the fact that I failed to take either linear algebra or differential equations when I had the opportunities. Does anyone else have this problem?

The thing is, I neglected those classes because I didn't need them for my degree (in physical sciences, interdisciplinary), and had insufficient motivation to pursue them after I graduated from my undergrad. I was pretty done with math after third semester calculus. I did just fine in the course, but it just sort of lost me in the translation from classroom to life. Usually I'm pretty good at understanding that relationship, but multivariable vector calc just did not do it for me. I said to myself, "Self," I said, "when math stops having any ACTUAL NUMBERS and just has Greek letters and operators, that's where I stop, too."

So, naturally, 10 years after I've graduated with my bachelors degree, I am now working heavily with matrices and vectors, doing complicated calculations and translations among varying three-dimensional reference frames.

1 comment:

Willow said...

So are you going to go take linear equations now?