The best way for me to get good at some particular type of math, or programming, or skill, in my experience, is to put yourself in a position where you need to do it for something. Find a job that requires you to do a bit of programming, or pick a task that requires it. Spend time on it, and you’ll learn a bit. Then go back and realize you missed some basics, and pick them up. Oh, and read a ton.
You’re interested in a lot of things, and trying to catch up with what you feel you should know, which is wonderful. What do you do with your time? Are you working? College?
I prefer the practice-based approach too, but from my position theoretical approaches are cheaper and much more available, if slower and rather tedious. In school they taught us that the only way to get better in an area is to do extra homework, and frankly my methods haven’t improved much since. My usual way is to take an exercise book and solve everything in it, if that counts for practice; other than that, I only have the internet and a very limited budget.
You’re interested in a lot of things, and trying to catch up with what you feel you should know, which is wonderful. What do you do with your time? Are you working? College?
Senior year in high school. Right now I have 49 vacation days left, after which school will start, studying will get replaced with busywork and my learning rates will have no choice but to fall dramatically. So now I’m trying to maximize studying time while I still can… It’s all kind of backwards, isn’t it?
Where you go to college and the amount of any scholarships you get are a bigger deal for your long term personal growth than any of the specific subjects you will learn right now.
In the spirit of long term decision making, figure out where you want to go to college, or what your options are, and spend the summer maximizing the odds of getting in to your first choice schools. I cannot imagine that it won’t be a better investment of your time than any one subject you are studying (unless you are preparing for SAT or some such test.) So I guess you should spend the summer on Khan, and learning and practicing vocabulary to get better at taking the tests that will get you into a great college, where your opportunities to learn are greatly expanded.
I’m afraid all of this is not really applicable to me… My country isn’t Western enough for such a wide range of opportunities. Here, institutes for higher education range from almost acceptable (state universities) to degree factories (basically all private colleges). Studying abroad in a Western country costs, per semester, somewhere between half and thrice my parents’ yearly income. On top of everything, my grades would have to be impeccable and my performances worthy of national recognition for a foreign college to want me as a student so much as to step over the money issue and cover my whole tuition. (They’re not, not by a long shot.)
The best way for me to get good at some particular type of math, or programming, or skill, in my experience, is to put yourself in a position where you need to do it for something. Find a job that requires you to do a bit of programming, or pick a task that requires it. Spend time on it, and you’ll learn a bit. Then go back and realize you missed some basics, and pick them up. Oh, and read a ton.
You’re interested in a lot of things, and trying to catch up with what you feel you should know, which is wonderful. What do you do with your time? Are you working? College?
I prefer the practice-based approach too, but from my position theoretical approaches are cheaper and much more available, if slower and rather tedious. In school they taught us that the only way to get better in an area is to do extra homework, and frankly my methods haven’t improved much since. My usual way is to take an exercise book and solve everything in it, if that counts for practice; other than that, I only have the internet and a very limited budget.
Senior year in high school. Right now I have 49 vacation days left, after which school will start, studying will get replaced with busywork and my learning rates will have no choice but to fall dramatically. So now I’m trying to maximize studying time while I still can… It’s all kind of backwards, isn’t it?
Where you go to college and the amount of any scholarships you get are a bigger deal for your long term personal growth than any of the specific subjects you will learn right now.
In the spirit of long term decision making, figure out where you want to go to college, or what your options are, and spend the summer maximizing the odds of getting in to your first choice schools. I cannot imagine that it won’t be a better investment of your time than any one subject you are studying (unless you are preparing for SAT or some such test.) So I guess you should spend the summer on Khan, and learning and practicing vocabulary to get better at taking the tests that will get you into a great college, where your opportunities to learn are greatly expanded.
I’m afraid all of this is not really applicable to me… My country isn’t Western enough for such a wide range of opportunities. Here, institutes for higher education range from almost acceptable (state universities) to degree factories (basically all private colleges). Studying abroad in a Western country costs, per semester, somewhere between half and thrice my parents’ yearly income. On top of everything, my grades would have to be impeccable and my performances worthy of national recognition for a foreign college to want me as a student so much as to step over the money issue and cover my whole tuition. (They’re not, not by a long shot.)
Thanks for the support, in any case...