For me, the leap to multivariate calculus gave me a lot of trouble.
Differential equations was doable but no longer fun for me, either.
It was a combination of multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations where I just wasn’t having fun with math anymore. Those subjects represented the end of pure math education for me, and later engineering classes requiring knowledge in those were also not a ton of fun. Went from a self-described math and science guy to just…not describing myself in that way anymore.
Honestly the standard curriculum was fine. It was when you got into trying to apply those skills to deciphering academic literature in a meaningful way as part of a broader career that things got tricky.
At a certain point my pattern recognition skills reached their limit to where learning each new concept was still the same, but I had a lot more trouble organically seeing and identifying when a particular technique was useful for a particular type of problem. Which is something that happens to a lot of different people at different stages of their math education, just happens to different people at different points.
And maybe I could’ve stuck with it, or used it enough to where I eventually got it easily the way I had done with all math topics before that, but I ended up steering the rest of my engineering education into topics that weren’t as heavy on that type of math. More programming and logic and microcontrollers, less electromagnetics and radio signals.
For me, the leap to multivariate calculus gave me a lot of trouble.
Differential equations was doable but no longer fun for me, either.
It was a combination of multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations where I just wasn’t having fun with math anymore. Those subjects represented the end of pure math education for me, and later engineering classes requiring knowledge in those were also not a ton of fun. Went from a self-described math and science guy to just…not describing myself in that way anymore.
Honestly the standard curriculum was fine. It was when you got into trying to apply those skills to deciphering academic literature in a meaningful way as part of a broader career that things got tricky.
Is it just that it becomes so difficult/technical at that point?
At a certain point my pattern recognition skills reached their limit to where learning each new concept was still the same, but I had a lot more trouble organically seeing and identifying when a particular technique was useful for a particular type of problem. Which is something that happens to a lot of different people at different stages of their math education, just happens to different people at different points.
And maybe I could’ve stuck with it, or used it enough to where I eventually got it easily the way I had done with all math topics before that, but I ended up steering the rest of my engineering education into topics that weren’t as heavy on that type of math. More programming and logic and microcontrollers, less electromagnetics and radio signals.
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