I don't do well in university style math classes. It takes me a long time working through something to understand what is happening (and why - the why of a thing is one of the first questions I ask when I'm learning something new).
It takes me about twice as long to learn a math concept as my peers (or so it seems). But I'm typically the first to speak up during a lecture.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If you're anything like me, you hold yourself to a higher standard when it comes to understanding a concept. A lot of people I know (I'm in second year math) do way better than me on exams but can't even explain some of the basic concepts in the courses, like:
* what is a basis?
* what does it really mean to diagonalize a matrix?
They've mastered the on-paper calculations but haven't put any thought into the deeper meaning of these concepts. When I try to explain they give me an odd look, as if to ask why anyone would care about these things. Are we raising an entire generation of Clever Hanses? [1]
I think the problem with university is that it's become too closely correlated with economic and social status. Or perhaps it's always been that way, though in the past it was not so much a cause of status but an effect.
This was brought home to me when I had to calculate the moment of inertia of some gears in a gearbox. I started with the concept of MoI, and worked it out with a bit of calculus. Another engineer was looking over my work, and asked "what book did you get the formula for MoI out of?" (The shape of the gear was unusual and the book formulae didn't match.)
Anecdotally, I live in the shadow of a Big Ten university, so I know a lot of academics, and I don't think any of them have expressed a "follow the rules" approach that I was able to discern. Likewise for the people I know who are K-12 teachers, private music teachers, and so forth.
Edit: There were some exceptions, such as my double bass lessons.
So the MoI was not simply a stackup of some stock shapes.
It's not that the calculation was particularly difficult, it's just that calculus was needed, and one couldn't just copy the formula for a stock shape.
It was just clear to me that some engineers were formula-pluggers and others learned it at a deeper level.
Stock shapes were certainly handy to check the math with, however. Fit the gear into a stock shape envelope, and have the gear envelope a stock shape. Your calculation should fall in between the results of those shapes.
The purpose of calculating the MoI was to determine if the stops at the end of the screw were strong enough to stop the gearbox without shattering.
That explains it.
Airplane parts are a whole 'nother world. I imagine that rocket parts take that to the nth level, which is one reason that working on rockets is the ultimate for an engineer. A real engineer would pay to work on an F1 engine design <g>.
Maybe take a good literature or philosophy class if your university offers. They won’t help you understand CS (most likely — although some weird parallels can crop up), but they’ll expand your mind. If you let them!
This is actually an excellent habit, and you should nurture it as much as you can. It looks like you have done a careful SWOT analysis, and thats the way to go.
Being a Marxist in business school would be, as would being a libertarian in art school.
(Added later...) I don’t know what you’re studying. And I know philosophy and fine arts programs get shat on sometimes, but one thing those subjects allow (when taught properly) is a very, very deep questioning and thoughtfulness towards many things. In my experience, anyway.