To anyone taking a hard math class: if you have that sinking feeling-- you lost the thread, you just don't even know what the heck the class is even trying to do anymore. You can follow each step but the "big picture" is gone.
You aren't bad at math.
It won't always be like this.
Anyone can get lost.
You do need to find help, urgently, but don't make it worse by beating up on yourself for not instantly getting everything.
Seek other presentations of the topic. You'll get back in the flow.
"Young man, in mathematics you are not supposed to understand things. You only get used to them." -- S.Ulam, or maybe Von Neumann, to a new student.
This is the kind of confidence you build by getting that thread back again after you've lost it a few times.
Only started to get there towards the end of grad school. Now I know that if I read some math & don't get it I'll just memorize the definitions & put it away. Come back later. Read it again. Still not there? Memorize theorems. Put it away. Come back. Still not there? Explain it to my husband or cat. (rarely gets this bad)
But this works every time.
@futurebird @JorgeStolfi I like “rubber ducking” when I’m debugging something mysterious. I’ll explain it to the rubber duck on top of the monitor (or the dog (the cat loses interest)) and that helps me get it
