Many students would prefer not to take any math courses. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.
Math is so central to careers and life in general that most institutions will have a math class or two as part of their pre-requisite courses regardless of which discipline a student wants to pursue.
This makes math a course you have to perform well at to graduate with a good GPA. Instead of trying to avoid it, a better route would be figuring out how to perform well.
Here are some tricks to help you do just that.
1. Complete All Your Homework
Top-performing math students never look at homework as a choice. Instead, they take all their assignment seriously, ensure they give them their time and attention, and ensure they complete them to the best of their ability.
This is a tip you can borrow. Ensure to finish all your homework as assigned. This will help you review what you learned in class. If you cannot complete your homework, this is a good indicator that you have not mastered the subject matter and should take another look at it.
In this case, talk to your instructor, consider getting online math tutors, or seeking help from bright students in your class.
2. Prioritize Your Classes
School comes with a lot more than just classwork. There are extra curriculum activities, your social life, and so on. While all these are important, they need to be balanced out so that neither aspect of your school life suffers.
One way to ensure you do well in math is by making your math classes a priority.
Math classes move quickly, with a different concept being introduced in every class to build up to previous knowledge. Attending all classes religiously ensures you do not create learning gaps that can be hard to fill.
3. Get Help Quickly
It’s admirable to try and resolve your schoolwork problems on your own. However, letting issues linger too long can be disastrous.
As you are waiting to get help when stuck, the instructor and the rest of the class move on to other topics. If you are not careful, you risk falling further and further behind and getting more overwhelmed.
Teachers are always happy to help their students catch up and are always receptive to requests for extra support.
Make a habit of speaking up quickly, asking for clarification in class, creating study groups before exams, and so on.
4. Learn By Doing
Math does have some theory, but these parts are often used to explain concepts and guide you on solving math problems.
In your exams and real life, you will need to solve problems, not necessarily explain the theories behind them. For this reason, the best way to learn math is by doing.
After each class, sit down, review the day’s lesson and solve a few problems from the topics covered in the course. Ensure to have a workbook that provides the method and answers to check your answers against.
If you don’t have the answers already available, you can use an online calculator. For instance, if you are working on a matrix problem, you can input the equation in an online matrix calculator and check your work.
This will help cement the information learned and flag any areas that you have difficulty in.
5. Go beyond Memorization
As you get through the set curriculum, seek to understand how what you learn can be applied to solve real-life problems.
This helps you understand the concept rather than merely moving through the motions.
Do this for topics by understanding the why and the how behind what you learn, pick apart formulas, and know why they are applicable. You learn better this way and understand your coursework much better, which supports good performance.