Big Picture

Think I can pin point the main problem with the first year of my academic experience - I didn't see the entire picture of the course when I started it.

Think in order to do well, I needed to see the whole issue before I begun tackling the smaller problems specifically. What happened this year was that I was plunged immidiately into the course without knowing where I was headed towards, myopically trying to make sense of seemingly random bits of infomation, and not knowing how to deal with them, and how it fell in place within the bigger scheme of things.

I had hoped that such a larger insight into the mathematical issues would have been introduced together with the course, but I guess if one doesn't see it for himself in the first place, it would be quite difficult to get the main issue across during lectures and tie it in with the things being taught. Often one needs to phrase the main issue in many different ways in order to get a full grasp of it. This could have been achieved by discussing the issue with a variety of people, and reading up different materials on it, or watching programs about it. Guess that's precisely why the lack of people around me whom I could discuss such issues with had served to make my academic experience here so unfulfilling.

Ah well, a little late for this new insight to help me in my exams now... But it'll be useful to take note of this in the following years. Need to try to see the goal I am headed towards, so that the peripheral problems wouldn't seem so big.