“I can’t do a single problem correctly!” I shouted into my calculus textbook. I threw my pencil and calculator down onto the desk and covered my face with my hands. About a minute passed before I noticed that my palms were wet and that I had dotted my textbook with a few tears. It took every nerve in my body to keep from having a nervous breakdown. There was 24 hours until the calculus II final exam and it seemed no further practice or review would improve my understanding of sequences or series. My mind told me to give up trying, but I knew if I did, I’d really end up failing the final. The problem I faced was lack of motivation.
I had to pull it together. Your classmates know what they’re doing, I thought, they can help you. After all, the class average was 76%, which is decent for a calculus II class. I texted one of my friends with a high average to ask for some explanations. I just needed a little confidence booster. He replied that it would be impossible to learn any concepts in this amount of time before the exam. Sorry.
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