- #1
david.aloha
- 14
- 0
Hi, to start I'll give some background on myself. I've been out of high school for 4 years now - for a year and a half of that I went to university doing a BSc in Kinesiology but left the program (hard to explain completely but I didn't know what I wanted to do/study, I struggled with big classes as I do with crowds in general, and perhaps I just wasn't as committed to it as I should have been and was feeling generally disenfranchised). I initially applied to engineering, but decided to switch last minute due to a stigma with engineering that I picked up from several people I was around (stagnant, overworked, boring jobs). I've always loved math and the sciences. I've never been the most consistent student - I find I'm hugely teacher (or professor) dependent based upon teaching styles, and I often take awhile to pick up on concepts, but by the same token, I also often end up being the guy who everyone thinks is so smart for REALLY grasping it later on and having insight into all kinds of things because of that.
The work that takes another student 1 hr often seems to take me 2 - even though this usually results in me grasping it better than they do. It makes dealing with a heavy workload challenging though. I find I take longer to get things done, I lose sleep (which I have a hard enough time with already), and the aforementioned crowd thing gets to me even more when I'm in that state.
I've always loved playing around with things like Lego, playing strategy games, or other peculiar or intricate activities that absorb me for awhile and allow me room to create, explore, and understand the intricate details of a system. I love understanding why things work the way they do (and indeed the word why is probably one of the most used in my vocabulary - and this is perhaps where a large degree of the teacher/prof dependent factor comes in, plus class size, because it affects my ability to connect in that way). I'd say that I definitely have a very active imagination, and a strong tendency to visualize and "connect the dots" when I'm doing/learning something. I also tend to do better when I can really sit down and explore a complex topic in depth at my own pace - almost dismantling it and putting it back together like a mental puzzle. I'm sure you can imagine why this may cause me to run into problems with regular progressions of material, though I find it definitely gives me advantages when it comes to really getting the fundamentals of the material.
Sorry, I know this is long. The title summed up my question: would you recommend choosing math/physics (undecided at this point) or engineering? I love conceptual activities, but I also like building and designing things. I realize that both routes can be very intensive, and the sheer amount of material may be a big hurdle (though honestly, I can't say I'd give up the way I approach things and the understanding I gain for most other people's approach) - but worry more about engineering for this than math/physics based upon what I've heard/read. My other concern about engineering is the general lack of flexibility with the programs, but I really am interested in the engineering design side that would be missing from math/physics. My passion isn't really specific - I kind of find things, get really interested for awhile, then change modes to something else (hey, apparently it worked for Leonardo Da Vinci). My interests often times cross over and mix with each other, but it's not like they're always in one limited thread. I've always found math/physics really interesting though - I'm taking a distance course that's more or less applied matrices/linear algebra, though I wish it had more fundamentals to it.
It's just hard to decide which way to go. I feel kind of torn since I have interests that really lie in all domains (insert math pun here). To top it off, I've also considered Computer Science and am working on a game project in XNA using C# right now.
The work that takes another student 1 hr often seems to take me 2 - even though this usually results in me grasping it better than they do. It makes dealing with a heavy workload challenging though. I find I take longer to get things done, I lose sleep (which I have a hard enough time with already), and the aforementioned crowd thing gets to me even more when I'm in that state.
I've always loved playing around with things like Lego, playing strategy games, or other peculiar or intricate activities that absorb me for awhile and allow me room to create, explore, and understand the intricate details of a system. I love understanding why things work the way they do (and indeed the word why is probably one of the most used in my vocabulary - and this is perhaps where a large degree of the teacher/prof dependent factor comes in, plus class size, because it affects my ability to connect in that way). I'd say that I definitely have a very active imagination, and a strong tendency to visualize and "connect the dots" when I'm doing/learning something. I also tend to do better when I can really sit down and explore a complex topic in depth at my own pace - almost dismantling it and putting it back together like a mental puzzle. I'm sure you can imagine why this may cause me to run into problems with regular progressions of material, though I find it definitely gives me advantages when it comes to really getting the fundamentals of the material.
Sorry, I know this is long. The title summed up my question: would you recommend choosing math/physics (undecided at this point) or engineering? I love conceptual activities, but I also like building and designing things. I realize that both routes can be very intensive, and the sheer amount of material may be a big hurdle (though honestly, I can't say I'd give up the way I approach things and the understanding I gain for most other people's approach) - but worry more about engineering for this than math/physics based upon what I've heard/read. My other concern about engineering is the general lack of flexibility with the programs, but I really am interested in the engineering design side that would be missing from math/physics. My passion isn't really specific - I kind of find things, get really interested for awhile, then change modes to something else (hey, apparently it worked for Leonardo Da Vinci). My interests often times cross over and mix with each other, but it's not like they're always in one limited thread. I've always found math/physics really interesting though - I'm taking a distance course that's more or less applied matrices/linear algebra, though I wish it had more fundamentals to it.
It's just hard to decide which way to go. I feel kind of torn since I have interests that really lie in all domains (insert math pun here). To top it off, I've also considered Computer Science and am working on a game project in XNA using C# right now.