Math "Review"

Right now I am in the middle of math review. It is called math review, but for me it is not a review. It is the first time that I am seeing 90% of the material that we are covering. It was kind of sad that the professor was able to cover almost all of the math I knew in the first lecture. The math we are going over is very abstract and a lot of it is related to optimization and real analysis. This class has made me feel really dumb. For the first few days I had the hardest time paying attention for the entire three hours of class. It reminded me a lot of the beginning of my mission when I was trying to learn Portuguese. I could only focus so hard for so long until my brain would get so tired that it would just turn off. Gratefully every day it became less of a struggle. I hope that this will be the case with my math review. It has gotten better, but I still feel like I am behind a lot of the other students. I laughed when I found out that upper level math classes at BYU counted for foreign language credit, but now I understand why. I comfort myself with the fact that most of the other students are Econ PhD students so most of them have already taken graduate level math classes. The few math classes that I have taken in the last seven years are nothing compared to the amount of math that most of the other students have taken. All of the Econ students have to take a preliminary exam at the end of the year covering all of the micro Econ classes that we take this year. If they don’t pass after a couple of attempts then they are kicked out of the program. Luckily I am not required to take this exam. My goal for this year is to pass my Econ classes and then do well in my Accounting seminars. I hear from everybody that it doesn’t matter how well you do in the Econ classes as long as you pass. So that is my goal and my strategy is to become friends with some of the smart econ students so that they will study with me. Maybe I can bribe them with a good dinner from Amber. Most of the other students are single so I am sure they would appreciate a home cooked meal.