I have my first integral calculus midterm on Thursday, and it might just kill me. I am not expecting to do particularly well, mainly because I did not crack my textbook until this week. This is a habit of mine at the beginning of each semester - pretending I am still on break when clearly I am not. This is not to say I haven't done any work - my beloved tutor Muna and I got cracking on this course two weeks before it even started - It's just that I haven't done any work on my own outside of the one-and-a-half blissful hours I spend with Muna each Monday (and Saturday and Wednesday this week).
I find integral calculus (well, calculus in general) pretty meaningless. I can memorize how to do the work and go through the motions and figure shit out, but it's pretty much like a more torturous form of sudoku if you ask me. Paul claims this stuff is not only useful, but he actually uses it on a daily basis. I guess since I'm not in a field nor do I intend on ever being in a field where I'll have to use the limit definition of the integral to find the sigma of f(x) delta x as n approaches infinity, it'll continue to be Greek to me. The thing I find the most frustrating about calculus is how I can spend literally nearly an hour and pages and pages of writing one one single problem only to end up with a zero or a one as my answer. All that work for a friggen one! Give me something more profound! Although according to Paul, one is the most complete number there can be. It's why he always tells me he loves me 'one'. I love him 'one' too.
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Paul, as lovely as he is, is a freak of nature. Don't listen to him. I'm quite certain that although many many people are forced to learn integration, we can get away with hating it just fine. I do, and I feel just fine. (and btw, it was definitely the low light of math for me. Multi-variable calculus---which I believe you thankful will never need to know the glories of---was a walk in the park by comparison).
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