[0xRusty]

> Do not let yourself fall behind.

That hit home. I'm afraid I was one of those lazy math undergrads who struggled with a few of the first year topics, didn't get help or put the hours in and never really recovered. I will maintain I think the teaching was very poor in places (lots of "just trust me" handwashing and "this is obvious so I'll leave it to you to complete" which for an 18 year old frankly sucks). A system that lets you get 30% in "analysis 1" and then just marches you straight into "analysis 2" next semester and expects you to just pull your socks up isn't much of a system to me. Honestly I'm afraid my time at university doing maths was miserable. I should have done something more applied like engineering or CS probably.

Someone once told me "If you like biology at school, do psychology at university. If you like chemistry, do biology. If you like physics, do chemistry. If you like maths, do physics and if you like philosophy, do maths". I should have listened.

[vector_spaces]

I agree that the system is garbage. School ruins math -- but I just want to share that nothing stops you from revisiting math later as a fully actualized adult, without the bullshit time constraints and grade pressure. Math isn't well suited to time pressure -- in my view math is about spending lots of time with ideas and playing with them and taking risks and making dumb guesses, it's moonshot through and through. At its core is play, and time pressure doesn't serve anyone well.

Anyway, if you were interested in it, you can always revisit it, and even try taking a class again if you ever want to. There are lots of great books out there for self-learners, and lots of communities of folks learning together

[jll29]

> "If you like biology at school, do psychology at university. If you like chemistry, do biology. If you like physics, do chemistry. If you like maths, do physics and if you like philosophy, do maths"

This is good advice if the objective is to do well regarding grade results. If you want to get down to the bottom of things, to understand everything and to solve fundamental questions of science, you might well want to invert the advice:

If you liked biology, study chemistry, for the processes of life are (electro-)chemical processes.

If you liked chemistry, study physics, for the processes of molecules and atoms, their formation and reactions, are physical processes.

...

[jgwil2]

The way I heard this phrased back in the day was, "Biology is really chemistry, chemistry is really physics, physics is really math." Never heard psychology or philosophy added to the chain.

[xanderlewis]

> If you like maths, do physics and if you like philosophy, do maths.

Seems like I made the right decision! (I did maths.)