So a month or so, I watched This Video STEAM Education: Putting an A in your STEM and i really liked the Idea. The basic gist is to teach science in creative ways, for example, instead of just being show the Bohr model of an Atom, you are given the know facts surrounding the the element, and are asked to reduce how they come together to form this specific model and shape.
At the moment, i am taking High School Calculus for the first time and its all going over my head. Suddenly Math feels like its more vibes than anything else, and its alot. The closest thing i ever took in normal math, that wasn't just an equation with an answer, was Simultaneous equations, and not gonna lie, While i didn't used to have math anxiety in high school, this stuff sure as hell scares me.
Some people in YouTube video mentioned how different ways of learning Calculus worked for them, that they were actually able to understand the topics
Some quotes:
As an adult I came to realize that math isn't taught very well in high school. In High School I got good grades in math, but I realize I didn't actually learn it very well. For example, I didn't actually understand what a Sine and Cosine are, I just learned how to plug them into a formula without understanding why the formula worked.
I got a much better understanding of Trigonometry when I started learning how to do some programming for making video games. I had to write code that would rotate a little space ship in the game, which required me to learn how the Trigonometric formulas actually worked.
Many of us think of games as just being arts and entertainment, so it's kind of funny that they ended up teaching me math better than school did. I realized I had a bias that I think a lot of people have, where they assume that math is supposed to be boring and difficult, but it doesn't actually have to be that way.
And
It was not until I got to college, took my first programming course, and learned about binary, octal, and hex that I understood how numbers work. It was a true lightbulb moment. I took CALCULUS in high school and this was the first time in my life that arithmetic made sense.
After the awe finally wore off, I just thought of the years of rote memorization I suffered through, the overwhelming confusion that came from staring at pages of complex notation because the fundamental building blocks were never explained to me. I could do the math, but I always struggled because I didn’t know WHY I was doing things this way. It made me think of the kids who had the same feelings as I did with even more basic math, and my heart hurt. It’s messed up.
And
I'm in Math, and every time I tell someone outside of Math I did my PhD in it, they invariably respond something along the lines of "oh, you like math? is it because there's always an answer and it's straightforward?" or "oh, you like math? I hated math, it's too rigid". It's kind of funny that people seem to have a perception of this massive divide between "hard" or "definite" sciences and everything "creative." There is so much more to math than algorithmically determining a solution.
All to say, as an Adult ^TM^ who isn't restricted by the rigid system of school, i have subjects and topics i want to delve into. Originally, i downloaded a bunch of High School Books that i thought i could start with, but i am now thinking there are better resources out there
Here are some subjects i am interested in:
- Cactus/Math
- Geography
- Physics
- Sociology
- Religious studies
- Pharmacology
- Linguistics
- Computer science
- Geo-politics politics and international relations
- Art Theory
Despite the infinite amount of information on the internet, just googling stuff is Ass. Not to mention the huge amount of misinformation surrounding basic concepts(at least High School Textbooks are reviewed by some form of experts). And i don't have the option of going to a library.
Also, lectures are said to be very ineffective for learning(they are more about cost than anything else). And i am not cuffed to any exams or expected to memorize every fact, so i am very flexible in the activity i can do(barring cost and time)