Really not looking forwards to this afternoon (math test)

The Dutch Ghost

The Dutch Ghost

Grouchy old man of NMA
Moderator
Hello all,

This lies heavy on my shoulders so I have to vent it somewhere.
This afternoon I will be having a test at a HBO school (HBO is a Dutch type description of a more advanced school but I think it translates as university in the US though it is definitely different from what we classify here as a university) to determine if I can enter the school this coming September and get to find out if I can pursue my dream of becoming a game designer.

Unfortunate this test is a math test and I am not very good at that.
Truth is that it has been more than ten years since I last did some genuine math as the last course I was on was more about learning how to work with Adobe suit and understand principles of graphic design.

I could have prepared better for this math test but due to various factors, including my own failure to foresight that wasn't possible.
See, it wasn't clear at the time when I first made contact with this school that I could go to it as I could not afford the yearly commuting costs along with the costs of the school itself, and for a while it seemed to be an impossible dream.

But a charity I had contacted about sponsoring me at least for a year was responded and was willing to do so, if I passed the test of course.

Then I quickly had to set various procedures and preparations into motion in order to be ready for September, unfortunate extra training for math suffered under that.
Also some of the instructions of the material sent to me to prepare for the intake tests was rather unclear to me at the time.

The school did have a sort of warm up course for mathematics but I was already to late to sign up for that, and looking back at it the commuting costs would have been killer. So instead I had to look for someone myself who could help me catch up.
I found a student on a forum that offers various services such as extra training for subjects like languages, math, chemistry and so on and made an agreement with him to come to his house for some math classes. (it would cost me some of my savings but I felt it was worth it on the long run)

Some of the earlier materials was easy to understand but as it became more complex I rather lost track, especially as I have to learn in such a short time. I also have great difficulty with actually 'reading' sums, usually during a test all the specific details are written into stupid little stories from which you have to extract the relevant facts. I tend to read over these.

So now I am waiting for the afternoon.
What bugs me the most is not if I fail, if I do I could just take on a math course for adults and then learn the relevant formulas and how to read sums at a more relaxed pace, but rather that this might be my last chance to make something of my life.

My reasons for those thoughts are these two.
1. I am not sure if the charity would be willing to sponsor me again if I should try to take another intake test at a later date.

2. The UWV. The UWV or in English the Employee Insurance Organization is the social security organization from which I get my monthly income for living.
For now they have no problem with me trying to get back to school again (especially as the work integration project I am partaking in has been a disaster to say it mildly) as long as they don't have to pay, but this willingness could change any day now.

Our boneheads in Den Haag (our government) got the bright idea of putting the unemployed and disabled to work, doing all kinds of shitty tasks municipalities now hire people for or certain volunteer work, in other to earn their social income.
They want to do this so in order to fiddle with the unemployment ratings and make it seem like unemployment is lowering. (basically they are manipulating numbers to make them look better while actually not doing anything about the problem itself)

If the UWV suddenly decides to do this and order me to do something for my income it will probably become impossible for me ever to go back to school again and try to get a degree that could help me get a better life.

In a way it feels then of being condemned to a life I hate living, forever thinking of how things could have been better.

This all burdens me a lot. And to top it off we have an extremely warm day here, and I already dislike travelling during warm weather.
 
People seem to always think that there is some holy grail at the end of the tunnel, so they keep looking at it until they die. Failure is an abstract term, you can be a bum living on the side of the street, reading and meditating, having more profound experiences than most people will ever have an opportunity to experience, or you can be millionaire who hates his life and is trapped in a maze of his mind.

If your only goal is better living, then i'm not sure you will ever reach happiness. Just find what you absolutely love doing, and pursue it with zealot like concentration. In this day and age of free information you can learn most things on your own and have a blast doing so.
 
I understand my goals are rather limited in some way and perhaps I expressed them wrongly here.
But I want to do this course as I feel this would make me happy on the long run and would also be an improvement on the current state of things.

One of my problems of learning solo is that I sometimes find it very hard to grasp concepts or formulas, I always work better when someone is willing to tutor or me or work along with me.
It is sort of a 'not seeing the forest for the tree situation', sometimes I grasp new concepts but have such an information overflow that I can not pick out the details I need to proceed.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
One of my problems of learning solo is that I sometimes find it very hard to grasp concepts or formulas, I always work better when someone is willing to tutor or me or work along with me.
It is sort of a 'not seeing the forest for the tree situation', sometimes I grasp new concepts but have such an information overflow that I can not pick out the details I need to proceed.
Click to expand...

You have to be willing to be the nail and the hammer yourself. When i started learning csound (sort of a programming language for sounds), i just had no idea what was going on. There were so many concepts that required different sets of knowledge (about 1200 different functions) like physics, math, programming, music theory etc, that it seemed like i was completely stuck. But i just kept writing my own little examples, then reading, then experimenting, then reading again from the start, even tried to learn other similar languages, read books on sound, tunning, and little by little it all started to come together. I'm still learning, because it is an absolutely vast field, but i already can write my own effects and music pieces.

Learning by yourself is much longer, harder and more error prone, but when you do it, you get a much better understanding of the field/topic + it feels much more fun and gratifying when you accomplish somehing. You will feel stuck and confused most of the time, but your brain will automatically start to get an understanding, once you cram enough hours of practice and reading.

P.S. I'm not implying that you should not try to get in these courses, i'm just saying that if you don't get in, you still have mountains of free knowledge on the internet and with time you can do wonders with that.
 
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Hello all,

Seeing as I started this thread I might as well tell you all how the test turned out in the end.

Well in the beginning all the subject matter/sums really seemed clear to me as I had studied a similar test in the days before as practice material, and I had a high confidence level that I would succeed in this matter.
But then things suddenly took a whole different turn.

The first couple of sums were traditional linear equations (equations in which you have to determine the value of X or Y or make equations with given facts). There was also a exponential growth equation which I also immediately grasped and which I could draw on a graphic paper as a visible line.

But then I got a Quadratic equation which facts really did not make much sense to me as I had never handled it in this way before.
I knew I could use the ABC equation for it but in this context I did not know how to apply.

Another damn tricky one was a sum in which the variables of X and Y were not accompanied by just one constant number, but two! And I never have done one like that.
The sum had to do with determining a person's diet, how much glasses of milk and lean beef he was allowed per day. Milk contained so much Iron and Protein and lean beef contain that much Iron and Protein. The question was how many glasses of milk and lean meat this person was allowed.

After that was a question regarding someone's body fat rate depending on the thickness on his flabs which then corresponded to a number on the chart.
On hindsight I could have used the Exponential Growth formula on this one but some of the numbers assigned to how thick flabs are did not make sense to me.

I know that you can determine increase or decrease level by dividing the new number through the old, but here the first number did a leap of a 140 before settling to a 100 per flab thickness number. I know a percentage can always vary slightly up or downwards but it never makes such extreme leaps.

The equation given with this sum BTW also did not make much sense, or it required a whole different approach to solving than I could come up with in two hours.

The last two questions were a little easier but I still had to somewhat guess with the last of them as I was running out of time.

Well what would have seemed like a certainty now has become somewhat of an event with random outcomes.
I so honestly hope that I will pass, but in the meantime I will continue what I can learn of math at home. Still a bit difficult though because theory does not compare to actually carrying out sums/formulas.

* * * * *

AskWazzup

P.S. I'm not implying that you should not try to get in these courses, i'm just saying that if you don't get in, you still have mountains of free knowledge on the internet and with time you can do wonders with that.
Click to expand...

I know, but unless it is presented to me in some sort of tutorial format I can follow I find it very difficult to start and how I should proceed. Raw information does not say me much.
Unfortunate a lot of these tutorials always have to be purchased, making the problem money again which I never seem to have enough of for tasks like these. (and it is not as if I spend a lot on all kinds of crap each month)

Right now, next to wanting to improve my writing and traditional drawing I would really like to learn how to digitally draw, and how to make stuff in 3D programs such as Maya, 3D max, and Blender
 
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Information usually does not get handed on a platter, you discover it while trying to learn something about the subject. So if you never start, you may miss out on some pretty nice sources, that you might stumbled upon if you tried.

Now then, have you tried:

https://www.khanacademy.org/
https://www.coursera.org/

As for blender, i have actually tried it a few years ago, even done some minor things. You might want to learn the basics and get comfortable with it at first, and for that you don't need all that many resources. Just try to practice regularly. Well, that kind of applies to most everything, if you want to get good at it, do it every day, even if its only 15 minutes.
 
Hi AskWazzup

Please don't think of my hesitation as laziness, it is more uncertainty and confusion on where to start that makes me slow to start on efforts to learn new skills and knowledge. Having the feeling that what I am doing is not going to lead to what I want to learn or accomplish.

I did find some great online tutorials on Blender such as http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html, and my friend Anders did tell me about Khanacademy.
Still I would really love it if there was someone nearby who could help me get started with drawing digitally. I do think my drawings so far come out looking rather torn or raffled because I have not used the right settings with the stabilizers.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Please don't think of my hesitation as laziness, it is more uncertainty and confusion on where to start that makes me slow to start on efforts to learn new skills and knowledge. Having the feeling that what I am doing is not going to lead to what I want to learn or accomplish.
Click to expand...

Oh i understand you completely, because i sometimes am in that position too, but doing something is better than doing nothing, at the very least you find out what paths are wrong.


The Dutch Ghost said:
I do think my drawings so far come out looking rather torn or raffled because I have not used the right settings with the stabilizers.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's called learning. You got to suck at first, it's kind of mandatory.

p.s. Khan academy is great for math newbs. I tought myself algebra for the first time in my life, while watching and doing the exercises. Before that i sucked major balls for ages. Taking a few month break now, to concentrate on sound and music, but will be back at it by the end of the summer.
 
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