Sums and Differences

So, I've had two calculus classes, and I'm running into a wall I haven't had to deal with for years.


We had a quiz on Thursday covering the prior day's section.  It was just two problems, and both had been on the homework we'd done.  The prof gave us 30 minutes to do it, with a 10 minute break after; anyone who finished early could go on break early and hang around outside.


I was done in about 10 minutes (takes a bit to write it all out), along with 3-4 other people.  The rest of the class (36 total) took longer, with about half the class taking 25+ minutes.


Outside, talking with some of the other students, it became really obvious that the answers I got and the logic I used to get them was completely different than what most of them did.  While it's entirely possible I bombed the quiz, looking up the problems when I got home seems to indicate I got them right.


And thus we run smack dab into a situation I dealt with all the time in high school and really haven't faced since then: either the work is easy and everyone else is abnormally slow, or the work is hard and I'm just abnormally fast.


I know, I know, that's a problem everyone would like to have.  Except, it's not.  Remember, I have trouble with thinking of other people as "people" anyway; I have to constantly reinforce the notion that they are actual people just like me.


But in high school, there were all these constant reminders that I wasn't like everyone else.  Sure, in possibly good ways, but different is still different, and when you spend a lot of effort trying to remember how similar people are, constant reminders that you're different are a bad thing.


At work, my job requirements are so unique and so different from those of my coworkers that there's no real way to compare my skills to theirs.  I just operate under the (largely valid) assumption that they're just as smart as I am (or vice versa) but in different fields.


And that's entirely possible for the people in my class, except that most of them are *also* going for engineering, which means this is exactly the kind of thing they should be good at.  There's very little wiggle room for comparisons when you all take the same test and get a score at the end.


I'm... not sure how I'm going to work through this.  I don't want to become the guy I was in high school.  Luckily I do have some absolutely brilliant friends, so maybe I just need to hang out with them more to keep me in my mental place.


Anyway, beyond that little complication, homework is going to be something of an issue.  The average assignments are about 3.5-4h a section, and most Tuesdays we'll be covering two sections.  Which means having 7-8 hours of homework that has to get done between 9:30 pm Tuesday and 7 pm Thursday, in addition to 16 hours of work and 16-20 hours of sleep.  Essentially, if anything else is going on for Wednesday, I'm SOL.


So, I'm taking this weekend to try and get ahead a bit on the homework.  I've already finished what is due Tuesday, and I'm working on what will be due Thursday (about half-way done).  Tomorrow, I'll try to do what will be due *next* Tuesday, and then hopefully be able to keep ahead of the assignments so I don't run into problems.  That means doing probably double the work per section for the moment, since I don't have the list of problems to do and thus am doing all of them, but it should keep a margin for me.


Besides, other than the callouses from holding a pencil so long (we have to do the homework in pencil and paper), I'm actually enjoying the work.  And we're not even at the fun stuff yet (integration and derivatives).


It does mean I may have to reconsider how many classes I want to take next semester.  Three may be pushing it.