Final Reflection

Well, the class we all anticipated to fail is finally over and I think most of us learned a lot of calculus this year.

Some topics I caught on to right away such as tangent line and normal line since it was only taking a derivative and plugging in numbers. I also learned RRAM, LRAM, TRAM, and MRAM right away. This is partly because I did both my comments on these topics weekly for almost 2 months. It really is just plugging in formulas.

Other topics such as optimization and integration took longer to catch on too. I did not understand optimization at all until Brob gave us steps on the board one day. Those steps applied to every problem we saw. I think its easier to follow steps then to have to decipher the problem by yourself, at leas it is for me. Integration is not a hard topic, but it just took time to catch on too. A LOT of practice problems were done especially substitution problems. I still forget my +c sometimes though. I never really did get into the habit of putting it. I also did not know how to do anything in my calculator until around the last month of school. That is when John started giving me funny looks when correcting APs because I tried to do everything by hand. Who knew those a hundred something dollars would actually be worth it.

And finally, the topics that I still struggle with are graphs, angle of elevation, and related rates. Graphs I never did get from day one. I did get a little better with them since they were on EVERY AP, but I would have liked to have had a better understanding on them. I always struggled with word problems hence my problem with angle of elevation and related rates. Every problem differs so these cannot have a set of rules like optimization does. I have a problem with drawing the picture correctly and picking out the given and what we are looking for.

All in all, I feel it was a pretty successful year, and I want to thank you brob for HOPEFULLY getting me out of calculus in college; although, I cannot picture next year without it.
Also, a thanks to all my classmates for asking plenty of questions, so I did not have too =)
And a thanks to John for answering my thousands of questions even though many of them were repeated.
I will miss all of you!