Couch 177: I Get a Strange Magic - ELO

((Chihiro))

My mom would turn her didactics into trivial pursuit games or topics like Our Assassinated Presidents (go on, ask me about bullet paths...). They seemed like an awful lot of work on top of everything else.

Does anyone in your class do study groups? I was one of the nerdy students so I usually led the study groups except in chemistry. But stats, finance, accounting etc...those were my groups.

Study groups are how I got through med school. I never led any--the ones we did were all collaborative efforts where we would all tackle some complicated topic, or spend a marathon day reviewing an entire term worth of material.

You can do this! Stats is fun!

Stats was obviously one of my favorite classes, but I was so upset that we didn't make it to the end of the book. The prof said we had to go at the pace of the class...forget that! So she had me up at the board every class doing the problems and explaining it to the class. I should have gotten paid. I was upset that I didn't need to take a stats class in my grad program.

I went to the cardiologist yesterday because my H was concerned about my constant high pulse rate. I thought I'd be in and out, no problem, that my heart rate is just simply higher than normal. I guess not. They put a heart monitor on me for 48 hours The doctor said that it's one of two things: inappropriate tachycardia or anxiety. He said the way to figure out which it is will depend on my heart rate when I sleep. If it's high when I sleep, it's inappropriate tachycardia. If it's low, then it's anxiety. He said that the ekg also showed I might have an enlarged chamber in my heart So he's going to do an echo cardiogram in 2 weeks. I seriously thought it was no big deal. Now I'm kind of worried.

Hugs, I hope everything is OK. I forget, are you taking any psych meds? I ask because I suspect the Abilify I recently started taking was increasing my heart rate, so my p-doc said to try stopping it. I haven't taken it in 36 hours and my heart rate has already been noticeably lower today (according to Fitbit). So just wondering if any medication could be affecting it. Or could it be that you're still recovering from surgery?

I do take psych meds and one is Abilify. There's no way I can stop taking it. It helps with my SUI thoughts. The doctor really thinks it's my anxiety causing my high rate. He thinks this because I feel no symptoms which could be because my body is used to the high rate since I've had anxiety for a long time.

Wow, just what you didn’t need right now.

Maybe the stress of your husband’s health has made the anxiety worse?

Yes. It could be. But my clinic has it documented that I have a high pulse all the way back 5 years ago when I started with them. When I was in the hospital because of my breakdown due to my H, my pulse was 140ish. So definitely he does affect me.

So on a lark, knowing it wouldn’t be accepted because of the number of submissions they get plus they prefer to deal with established authors, and though they hardly ever bother to send rejection letters (if you don’t hear from them in three months you’re supposed to assume they rejected you), I sent the story I sent out a couple months ago to the New Yorker.

No, they didn’t accept it but it rated a personalized rejection letter, which is flattering and encouraging.

I hope this is not the highlight of my literary career.

venting:: I just spent my entire lunch break trying to do my homework. I am going to fail this class. I just don't understand the leap from last week to last night. It's like she went from this is the alphabet last week directly into 10 syllable scientific words last night. I am so lost. Oh well. Back to work. Maybe in the quiet of the library I will be able to figure out this assignment while I wait for a tutor....

art--wasn't there a prerequisite for this course? Maybe you could get the book for the prerequisite course and do a little review?

Or the online review (Kahn?) that Manatee suggested.

(((ArtieSwimsOn))) breathe deeply. Try not to get overwhelmed. Take it one topic at a time. I hope the tutor is helpful. Don't be afraid to ask the Prof for help (does the Prof have office hours?) You can do this.

No technical office hours... no office... she meets students at Denny's for help lol

There was, algebra. And I can do the algebra fine on those problems, it's setting up these tables and looking at the numbers in them to guess what kind of curve and stuff like that, that's throwing me. I need someone to show me setting up the tables slower than instructor did last night. I'll get it once I have a tutor i'm sure. I just panicked a little looking at all the problems and needed to vent.

Glad to hear your confidence is back. You can do this!

Forgot to say thanks! So, thanks! I was panicking earlier looking at all the problems.... I may write each one on a separate piece of paper so I can more easily focus on one at a time.

I’m tellin’ ya, bribe her with Grand Slams at Denny’s!

I don’t think math is supposed to involve guessing—probably why I was never good at it, I would get impatient and guess.

Well she is a bit of a character (if you recall her long self- introduction) so grand slams might work. Heh.

Are you doing Z tables?

No or perhaps not yet? These have frequency and cumulative frequency and percent and percentile and I forget what else and something called a stem leaf table?? I never thought I would say this but I miss just plain old algebra.... haha

I thought algebra was boring but I liked geometry and trig. And I liked stats. I liked finance better than accounting but I use more accounting in my job than finance. I use both but I use accounting everyday. I use stats in my job but I use accounting more than any of them. I never get to use geometry.

This page has a list of some online resources that may be helpful.

Online reference for review of introductory statistics material - Cross Validated

That about sums up every math problem I have ever done in my life.