Survival Guide to 1^st Year Mathematics at SFU^*

These notes are designed to help you survive your first year mathematics courses - and, hopefully, to make the experience a happy one, whether you are coming to us directly from school or college, or returning as a mature student.

The transition from high school to university may be difficult for many reasons, and students who don’t realize this early enough may find their grades are a good deal lower than they had hoped.

The pace of first year mathematics courses is much faster than that of high school math classes. Expectations are different, too. Students are given much more freedom: attendance at lectures, workshops, tutorials (if offered), review sessions etc. is usually voluntary. Students are expected to be responsible for finding out about course and instructor’s requirements, mastering the course material, remembering dates of tests and exams, homework deadlines and other important things. Therefore it is essential to develop proper and systematic study habits, as well as to know where to go for help if needed.

To help students in large first year Mathematics courses, the Department of Mathematics at SFU has created workshops, which serve as drop-in support centres for students. Each workshop has specific courses assigned to it.

If you are coming to university after several years away from school, you face an additional problem: do you remember enough to succeed in the course of your choice? If you are not sure, you can take a free Mathematics Assessment Test, available through the Algebra Workshop, on drop-in basis during the semester, and on specially set times in between semesters.

Study Habits, Helpful Hints:

Attend all lectures.

Take notes in the lectures. You may find it useful to transcribe them into a course summary, which can help in preparing for the final exam and identifying points in the material that are not clear to you. If you miss any lectures, ask your colleagues or the course instructor what was done during your absence.

Read the textbook.

Find out the required textbook and buy it as soon as possible. Try to read ahead what will be covered in class. This will help you to understand lectures better and concentrate on the extra comments your instructor is providing. Before you start to work on your homework, read the appropriate part of the book and your lecture notes. You are expected to understand the course material, not just be able to do the problems.

Do extra problems.

In most cases, doing just the assigned homework problems is not sufficient preparation for the exam. Work out enough problems to reach the point where you feel you understand what’s going on.

Start working on homework well before it is due.

Make sure you allow enough time to finish your assignment and possibly do extra problems.

Use the workshop for help.

Come for help if you have difficulties. Don’t wait for your problems to disappear. Ask a friend, a teaching assistant, your course instructor or a workshop coordinator for help if you have difficulties. Use the workshops!

Keep up-to-date. It’s hard to cram for math tests.

If you don’t work systematically, it’s not very likely that a night’s work before a test will help much. Usually it makes things even worse as an overtired brain is not able to think logically.

Work in groups.

Organize a study group to work together. Our experience shows that students who work in small groups often do better in the course than those working alone. Discussing homework problems and the course material with your group can help you to understand difficult concepts and to obtain a new insight. But take warning! The group cannot understand the concept for you. It may be tempting to let others do your homework for you, but you will not learn it this way. You must take the time to learn.

How to Prepare for Tests and Exams:

Never cram for math tests.

Studying just the night before may work with courses where you need merely to recall previously memorized information, not where you need to think logically.

Work systematically.

Make sure that you understand concepts, not just get answers. This will help you answer exam questions which do not at first seem familiar.

Practice writing exams.

It is not enough to know the material: writing exams is an art in itself. Check the old exams maintained in PDF format on the workshops' website. Write those exams pretending it is a real exam: time yourself, and don’t look at the textbook or your notes. If possible, write more than one practice test. Writing several practice tests may help you get used to the process.

Make your own exam.

Use problems from the book, assignments, and your notes to make an exam. Then try to write it pretending it is a real exam. Put together an exam made of all problems you would hate to see on the exam, and try to solve them, asking for help if necessary. Such an exam will probably be much more difficult than anything you can expect from your instructor, and you will learn a lot!

Use the workshop.

Bring the questions you have difficulties with to the workshop and ask for help from fellow students, a teaching assistant, your course instructor or the workshop coordinator.

Taking the exam.

When you get the exam paper, read it through carefully. Decide which problems appear easiest and do them first, proceeding through progressively more difficult ones. If the calculations for a question become unreasonable, check for errors. If you can’t find any, leave this question and come back to it after you finish all other work. You are more likely to spot your mistake if you don’t have to worry about finishing other problems. Furthermore, it is not wise to become obsessed with one question at the expense of finishing the others. If required, show all your calculations, not just the final answer. If you have time, check your work. Read the questions again and make sure you answered the question that was asked, and did everything you were supposed to do.

Learn from your mistakes.

A midterm exam is a learning experience, not just a way to evaluate your knowledge. Always pick up your marked exam as soon as it is returned. Read all comments carefully. Compare your work with the answer key, discuss it with your course instructor or Workshop Coordinator. Evaluate your preparation, think about what you can do to improve it. Ask for advice if you feel lost and discouraged.

* Written by Malgorzata Dubiel and amended with permission by Petra Menz