A couple of thoughts:
When I was in college, the teaching abilities of the senior faculty were poor. I had an outside tutor, a guy who was an engineer, with whom I could unravel a week's confusion in 45 minutes or less. We spent the rest of the tutoring time on engineering problems he had himself at work; I was able to be of assistance, which did wonders for my ego and brought me right to the edge of a double major in history and mathematics.
Unfortunately, my father overheard us discussing some of the equations he was wrestling with at work and decided that his services were no longer required. (Grrrr!--it was not expensive and I could have paid him from the money I was making working the max legal hours to finance my education.) Unfortunately, my father fired Doug "on the spot" so it never emerged that my contributions to the household many times over covered the expense of a tutor and there was no way to rehire Doug without embarrassment to my family.
What I am trying to convey here--along with all this personal history--is that an outside tutor is no embarrassment and can be an inspiration. No one in my family could go where I was heading, which was wave theory--keep in mind that this was the early seventies! This was an outside tutor, showing me the way and encouraging me to "go where no man has gone before...." (leaving out the "boldly" because I do not respond well to split infinitives)
I do not know what my life would be today if this tutor had not been fired. In frustration with the faculty, I walked away from mathematics. In fairness, the faculty was strengthened enormously because of experiences such as mine.
A good tutor can overcome just the obstacles you have described, so do give it some serious thought.
Dear CB, why are you obsessing over your "inability to do math"? There is probably some silly block--I scored higher in the SATs in the math than the verbal and no one was more surprised than I! Math is easy until it get incredibly theoretical, when it begins to sound like mysticism--but I'm O.K. with that.
Why do you wish you had been able to go to medical school? |
