Greetings friends. My goal for this blog is to not write as much and get it done before 11 so I can sleep. I'll rant quickly by saying fraternity stuff started and I am so unbelievably busy all the time; it sucks. I will say though, they make us go to mandatory 2 hour study sessions 4/5 nights of the week so I'm getting some quality work done. Okay so let's tackle this whole labeling and organizing thing.
Alright so we all know engineering is super difficult and uses complex terms and equations. I thought that about my high school calculus class. I'm a freshman in engineering. It's only going to get worse. However, thanks to the brilliantly interesting insight from the video lectures, I now know how to combat the confusion and help prevent others from being confused too.
Once again, the whole idea of labeling and being organized is super obvious (I guess it makes sense that they're called the "missing basics"). Being a self-titled man of organization, adhering to the concept of labeling should be easy (for the most part, or else they wouldn't be teaching us this). A simple example could be drawing diagrams for everything. Math, physics (next semester), and geography (maps? maybe? give me a break, I'm trying) can all use diagrams either in complex problems or on maps. Personally, I find what the Back of the Napkin emphasizes to be extremely true. How much easier is it to understand a math problem if someone hand draws a diagram or even just hand writes a solution? Alot. Yeah, it works. I'm excited to see how using diagrams and such in a more technical/advanced way works out. As we get deeper into engineering, we're going to need to work harder to keep things at a manageable level of confusion.
Hmmm what else. Oh yes, organizing. It's one thing to label a diagram. It's a whole other thing to label it in coherent fashion that doesn't overwhelm the viewer. It's true that labels help clear things up, but when there are "too many" labels or if they're mashed together, they can ultimately demoralize the viewer. I guess it's kinda like looking at a poster or a piece of paper that has too much info on it. So yeah, label, be organized, simplify things. If we, as engineers, ever expect our work to be understood by the general public (who are our customers, by the way), we need to make engineering as "kid friendly" as possible. Part of labeling and clarifying is asking questions, though. We have to ask questions and then we need to ask ourselves, "if they're asking questions, how can I make it so that that question isn't asked again." Questions not only help clarify things, they show where weaknesses are in presentations.
I'm super tired and hope I didn't forget anything.
Stay classy my friends,
Andrew
In physics last year, our teacher absolutely threw a fit when we didn't draw free-body diagrams for every problem that needed one, including clear labels of all forces involved in the situation. Eventually, the class more or less started to draw free-body diagrams, and you know what? Having a clear diagram to look at really made it a lot easier to solve the problem! Hooray for labeling, being organized, and simplifying things.
ReplyDeleteHandwriting things really does help out, especially in school work. Frankly, in just about all classes you can find some way to incorporate pictures which need labeling. I agree with you when you say that diagrams greatly help my comprehension since they break down complex things, into things i can actually understand.
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