is anybody else nervous and essentially scared?

Hi, guys.

I will be starting Open University on the 1st October.

I plan to study for a Certificate of higher education in computing & IT and mathematics.

I left high school at 13 year old and started working early due to family reasons.

I have always wanted to go to university since being a child.

Although now the time is approaching to start OU I'm super worried about mathematics part.

I was wondering if anybody had any tips on studying for the mathematics prior to starting.

link to mathematics modules - http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/details/mst124?orig=t13-citm
Thanks.

Reply 1

JollyCynic

Hi irdanknight,

I left school a few years before the end of compulsory education, too, and will be starting TU100 in October, as well. I'm from the States, though, so it's not an entirely par relationship.

My maths education was very uneven. I was in an advanced maths class at one point, then when I passed the exams without coursework, I was put into basic maths. A couple of years later the teacher noticed that I was re-teaching his class after he finished every day, because they didn't understand his explanations, but mine made sense to them. He put me back into advanced maths, but the result was that I skipped trigonometry entirely.

I'd self-taught over the years from books, but always felt a self-conscious gap in my knowledge that was embarrassing. When it came to choosing between MU123 and MST124, it somehow came to a head.

My solution was to go over to khanacademy.com, and see how badly I'd done. It turns out, I'd taught myself fine, but every time I came to a trigonometric problem, I would re-devise formulae to get the information I needed, since I never learned it by rote or by practice. Khan Academy filled in these gaps very quickly and smoothly. It took about a week back in June, and I've since used the information at least a dozen times.

So go over to http://mathschoices.open.ac.uk/are-you-ready-quizzes/mst124-quiz and figure out what your weak spots are, and fill them in with Khan Academy, or there are quite a few YouTube resources that might make more sense to your brain makeup.