Rajah
12 Sep 2005, 07:00 PM
I find math and the biological and physical sciences all fascinating. However, my career uses none of those for a few reasons:
1) I had a series of horrible math and science classes. I didn't have the personal initiative I needed at age 11 (surprise, surprise) to pick it up and learn it on my own.
2) The way math and science (particularly chemistry and physics) classes are typically taught do not favor INTPs. At all. Generally, these classes involved teachers making us solve endless pages of equations without ever telling me why I was doing it. Had I known, say, physics could be used to determine whether or not the stunt driver's car would crash into a wall, maybe I could have shown more interest.
3) My mom always insisted my strength was math and science, and I was wasting my time with other interests. I believe that my frustration with being told who I was, coupled with the intense pressure it put on me, made me disinterested in math altogether. Worse, my mom was probably right.
In college, I excelled in biology (except for one class spent half the semester talking about the urinary tract of a fish!) and statistics. However, I dropped calculus and couldn't even be bothered to go chem class.
Now, years after getting my B.A., want to brush up on math and science. Any reading recommendations? A good math text to start? With me, it does no good to hand me some remedial text because I will be so bored I'll try give myself a lethal papercut with it.
1) I had a series of horrible math and science classes. I didn't have the personal initiative I needed at age 11 (surprise, surprise) to pick it up and learn it on my own.
2) The way math and science (particularly chemistry and physics) classes are typically taught do not favor INTPs. At all. Generally, these classes involved teachers making us solve endless pages of equations without ever telling me why I was doing it. Had I known, say, physics could be used to determine whether or not the stunt driver's car would crash into a wall, maybe I could have shown more interest.
3) My mom always insisted my strength was math and science, and I was wasting my time with other interests. I believe that my frustration with being told who I was, coupled with the intense pressure it put on me, made me disinterested in math altogether. Worse, my mom was probably right.
In college, I excelled in biology (except for one class spent half the semester talking about the urinary tract of a fish!) and statistics. However, I dropped calculus and couldn't even be bothered to go chem class.
Now, years after getting my B.A., want to brush up on math and science. Any reading recommendations? A good math text to start? With me, it does no good to hand me some remedial text because I will be so bored I'll try give myself a lethal papercut with it.