Oh boy. This is a new and interesting experience for sure.

The first day had me trying to find a parking pass, like always, since the parking passes never seem to arrive on time. That's okay though, because school gives out temp ones on the first day. I did take my own advice and get to school early - a half hour early - to get the parking pass and find class, which was in the Vocational Services building. It was a large classroom, the largest one I've been in, and even though only half the seats were taken, it was still a large amount of people.

My teacher comes from Cal Poly Pomona, and it can be typical for professors who teach during the Summer to come from different colleges. Last Summer I had Jon Russell (from Cold War Kids, for reals), who isn't a classroom professor during the regular school year. The Math 25 professor's teaching style thus far seems to be different from the teachers I've had before at Chaffey, and she's decided to use an online book and grading system for the class.

The online system for Math 25 that also comes with the ebook.

I brought my laptop with me just for this purpose, but the class is so condensed that trying to follow along with the textbook is can be tricky. Instead, I correspond my notes from Math 425 with the notes I take for this class, since it seems Math 25 just expands on what I learned in Math 425.

First, we need to do an assessment so that the online system can tailor our learning experience to what we need to learn, i.e. what are our strengths and weaknesses are. It took me a while to do this assessment, and I was surprised at how much I had forgotten (mostly the later chapters of Match 425) in the last two weeks. I am glad I am taking this class now, because I don't want to lose all the hard work I did in Spring!

I didn't quite understand the report, but if I am not mistaken, I am a bit shaky on the last few chapters of 425 that will also be a part of 25 and are considered College Algebra (hence the need to take this class). These chapters were condensed into a month in 425 so I am not too worried about the results of this assessment.

The teacher moves rather fast through the material, but it isn't hard to understand. She doesn't sacrifice comprehensive teaching for speed, which is great. There were a few things I was iffy on, but I wrote notes in the margins of my notebooks about where the lesson corresponded to the book so that I could review later during study time. That way I am not floundering to correspond the lecture with homework.

The only real con I can see to this experience is the amount of time I spend sitting. I work full time so I mostly sit for 8 hours, then for four days a week I sit 2 more hours. By the end of the second day, my legs and butt ached! By the end of the fourth, my ankles were swelling like I had been sitting on a 15 hour flight to China in coach (protip: spring for the business class, trust me)! In fact, sitting here typing this, I feel like I need to get up and jog.


This weekend I will be tackling the homework, which I hope doesn't take up all of my weekend. It is a condensed, high credit class, so that may just be wishful thinking. There are due dates and all the homework is submitted online, so I don't have to worry about not getting credit or feedback like my first Math 425 professor.


How was your first week of Summer classes? Where did you excel, and where did you struggle? How do you plan to adapt?

I hate being bored. I'm one of those people who likes to be doing something constructive. Plus, as a non-traditional student who is returning to school, I work, so I don't have time for epic adventures but I also know how to, and want to, make the best use of my time.

Summer excitement!

That being said, there are things I want to do this summer, most of it being prep for next semester and the June 5th start date of summer classes. Here's my plan for the Summer:

Take a summer class. 
I've already talked about why this is important to do, but I feel like I need to make sure I am utilizing my time to the best of my ability. Sitting around the house or just going to work isn't fulfilling that purpose for me. Since school has ended, I've watched all of Sherlock...all of Call the Midwife..all of Riverdale...all of Anne with an E...you get the point. I could easily waste my summer on Netflix, but that time can also be used to get me ahead for next semester. Sure, Math 25 isn't what I'd call the most exciting plan for summer (although I am excited), but the time is going to pass anyway. Why not pass it doing something useful?

Earl Nightingale has the right idea.

Check out and fill out as many scholarships as I can.
I am on the Board of Governor's Fee Waiver, but I still incur costs for school. I spend money on books, fees, parking passes, and I also lose money when I take days off from work to do school related stuff. Plus, when I transfer, I will not be under the BOG. I am going to fill out as many scholarships as I can, because anything can help with the cost of college.
 
Plan to start a Non-Traditional Students Club/Union at my school.
I've already emailed the Associated Students Union at my school about wanting to start this up at my college. There is currently no club or union for non-traditional students there, and most, if not all, clubs there meet during the day, so non-traditional students cannot participate if they work full time. 

I hope that if I do get this started, that we are able to meet after 5 PM on weekdays, and that it can be a place where non-traditional students can get involved in school, work on being well-rounded students, and can be supported in the unique challenges they face as non-traditional students in a system built for Fresh Ex-High Schoolers.
 
Get involved. 
I definitely want to get more involved in the community and start preparing to be a teacher. I've applied to be a tutor in quite a few places, but I also volunteer with Helping Hands Pantry. I want to do more, and visit more often. I did tutor my cousin during the semester (2nd grade) and enjoyed being able to work one-on-one with a kid. I was able to get her to focus, and she was able to do a really good job on her project. She got an A, and delivered a great Powerpoint on Queen Elizabeth II (with works cited, I'm so proud). She learned quite a bit about integrity in school, how to be a good person, and how respect works. She picked the Queen because she liked that, "everyone does what she says." At the end, she said she learned that being respected like the Queen comes with respecting others, and serving others tirelessly and selflessly. I'm sure there's more to being Queen, but for a 2nd grader, it was a good learning experience.

I know there are plenty of kids out there who don't get the chance to work one-on-one with a tutor. Many parents don't get tutors for their kids because they believe they are expensive, and that a teacher should be able to do everything themselves anyway. That couldn't be further from the truth! In today's crowded classrooms, every kid - even the "gifted" ones - can get overlooked and left behind. I also know there's more to a child's success than aptitude for test-taking and following directions alone. It can be an emotional experience...and a child who believes they can't do something won't do something. It's up to the people around them to tap into the power of "yet."

I can't do that...yet.
I don't know that...yet.
...etc. 

A growth mindset not only benefits children in the classroom but us as college students!

Have some fun
There are a lot of people I've met who probably think that I don't know "how to have fun." The truth is, I find school and learning very fun. I love writing papers, studying, research, and challenging my brain. It's just who I am. Unfortunately a lot of these things are made synonymous with being a stick in the mud, perfectionism, and generally not being a fun person. I think that's sad, because a lot of people do really find this stuff enjoyable and that's ok.

That being said, I understand that too much of a good thing can really hurt. Brain farts, burnout, and of course, dealing with an autoimmune disease plus real life means you have to pull your head into reality every once in a while. Sometimes, you really do need some mindless fun to relax your big, beautiful brain. So I've made a list of all the things I want to do this summer, as modest as it may be:

• Go to the beach, maybe train it to San Diego
• Throw a Goodbye House Party (we're moving!)
• Hang out with my nephews more (we went to the zoo and had a party last weekend, but I also want to visit the Discovery Cube too, and see Cars 3)
• Squeeze in a visit or two to the Griffith Observatory and The Getty, as I haven't been in yeeaaars
•  Mani, pedi, hair, all that biz

 How are you spending the summer? What are you doing during the summer that is preparing you for what comes next in your college journey?

When it comes to notes, I'm usually a bullet-pointer. It's easy and effective for me, and I highlight stuff that is important. It may not be pretty (in fact, it's not pretty at all), but it works. It, however, isn't that great for math notes.

The first math teacher I had (last semester) gave us the tip of numbering our note pages, but since his teaching style was so disorganized it didn't help much. I've taken that advice into account this time, and researched a few ways to write notes, but found something that blended my bullet-point style with math.

First, set aside a few pages to create a Table of Contents.
This will help you later when you are studying and are trying to figure out what the heck you are supposed to study without flipping through a million pages.

Formulas on the left, Table of Contents on the right. I had screwed up the order but it still works.

I update this page with important page info, like Chapter Titles and the pages they are on, or where something specific is. It's an ongoing list! If you end up not using a few pages, tear them out for scratch paper later.

Next, set aside a few pages for Formulas and other important notes.
I write down all the formulas I encounter on these pages and what they are for. I then mark "Formulas" on the Table of Contents as the first few pages, with Formulas being the first page.

I keep a list of Formulas for easy reference at the front of my notebook!

I also have a page where I marked perfect squares and cubes, like an easy reference guide you see on the back of Pee Chees.

I bold and highlight each Chapter and Section.
I also mark them in the table of contents.

Left hand side has the work, right hand side has the explanation with important bits highlighted. Note the page numbers at the top!

Even though I note them in Table of Contents, if I am flipping through the notes, the Chapter and Sections will catch my eye. It also helps them stand out from the rest of my scribble-scrabble.
 
I write down definitions under the Chapter and Sections.
We are never quizzed on them, but it helps to know what is what. I don't usually mark these in the Table of Contents.

My previous teacher quizzed us on definitions, so now I'm a bit paranoid about knowing them. I note them and read them over, which actually does help with figuring out examples.

When showing examples, I do the work on one side and explain what I am doing step by step on the other.
Even if I always remember the order of operations, or to FOIL, or whatever, I always spell it out because I know when I go back to these notes later, I'm going to spend forever trying to figure out what I did where. This will save me time when I am reviewing before a test.

Here's the basic template without my messy handwriting! I don't color-code my notes like this, but you can if you want to.

The book doesn't do a good job in explaining each step. I think it assumes that I understand what its talking about, which can hinder my progress because 1) half the stuff they talk about is from Beginning Algebra which I took in 2002, which I don't remember much of, and 2) they over explain some steps and don't explain others at all.

"Dumbing it down" in notes may seem a little extra, but during review time, as I said, it's a life-saver!

That's it!
As you can see, this is rather utilitarian. There's no fancy colors or zentangles or coding system (all those colors will make my ADD mind go nuts anyway). Just the facts and explanations in an easy to find format. The only other way I think to make my notes better would have been to do them on graph paper. However, since I put all my classes in one notebook so I wouldn't lose any of them like I did last semester, I have to do with plain lined paper.

How do you organize your class notes? Are there any tips or tricks that you use that I haven't mentioned here?

Okay. Backstory. Me and math? Not friends. It's a long history that starts in the 2nd grade and I still would rather be doodling in my notebook than worrying about math. Public school pushed me all the way through to Trig and I don't know how because I don't remember half of what I was "taught."

If it were up to me, I wouldn't take a math class ever again. But I need to get through Statistics for Social Sciences for my major, and to do that I need to pass Intermediate Algebra. I did take this class before, but since I did that before the dinosaurs roamed the earth apparently, I need to take it again.

Yeah.

Last semester I tried, the teacher was...whatever. This semester the new teacher seems able to teach to the most math-inept of us all, (read: me). As I type this I'm awaiting the results of our first math test that I actually feel like I did good on, which is weird for me. But before the test, teach asked us if we had any questions.

I had one. I had a big one. It was an equation I had struggled with for two nights. I tried to figure it out and for some reason my brain couldn't wrap itself around it. I'm going to type this equation for you, and you are allowed to laugh if you get it (but only if I am allowed to laugh when you can't remember the definition to a $5 word from 11th grade, only fair). Ok, ready for it?

(x-y)²+3(x-y)-10

Yeah. I tried to factor it. Because that's what you're supposed to do, right? That was the instructions. I tried to group, rearrange, split, multiply out the (x-2)², EVERYTHING. I even tried plugging it into MathPapa and a few other engines to no avail. None of the answers I got matched what was in the back of the book.

See, for all you people who are "math smart", this is where us other people get tripped up. This is the "language barrier" or whatever. Don't think as it as in I can't do math. Think of it as in I am not fluent in this language. Keep laughing. Whatever.

So I shoot my hand up and was like, "Yeah, I got a question! Tell me how the heck you get the answer for this!" I then proceeded to lay down the equation as if it were the D.B. Cooper mystery. Surely this was a trick question and the answer in the back of the book was a typo. It had to be.

The teacher, bless his teacherly heart, writes it up there on the board and goes, "Instead of x-y, just substitute the x-y for another letter, like w."

He writes it out like this:

w²+3w-10

And then:

(w+5)(w-2)

And then he goes, "Just put the x-y back in where the w is."

And just like that:
(x-y+5)(x-y-2)

Ta-freakin-da.


Like I just couldn't. I couldn't handle it. The possibility of feeling stupid had no chance to sink in with how blown my mind was. It was like a whole new world opened up. One of the biggest OMG moments of my college experience and I swear I will never forget this stupid equation as long as I live.

It wasn't that I couldn't do the math, it was that I just didn't know you could do that. If you're thinking, well, that's a basic concept of Algebra, to substitute one thing for another, well...now you know where sometimes teaching fails. The importance of concepts get swapped for right answers and points on a piece of paper. I should have known this. But I didn't.

However, there is a point to all this. It doesn't have to do with an answer that is literally right in front of your face or accepting yourself as you are or whatever other platitude of the day that passes your FB or Insta feeds. It doesn't even have to do with if I will ever use (x-y)²+3(x-y)-10 in my life (I probably won't, who knows).

The teacher didn't do anything truly different than what the book said to do, but the book (wh

I think this has to do with the ability to teach and the frustration we get when we think something can be so simple but is so complex to others. Empathy can help you to understand that not everyone thinks the same way. I definitely want to be a teacher and I have to keep in mind that what may seem so easy to me may not be easy to others, and there are ways I'm going to have to articulate my process for others to understand. That doesn't make that other person stupid or me condescending (it would be if I treated them as they were stupid). Just as we expect students to learn we must also be willing to teach to them.