How I faced my fears and learned to be good at math
I hit a wall in college where math just stopped being something I intuitively "got". I'm sure that given enough time and motivation, I could have continued being "good at math" even at the higher levels, but these were luxuries I did not have, given everything else on my plate at the time.<p>My biggest problem with math, especially once I got into academia, was how it was taught. So many professors would scribble what seemed like nonsense on the board (symbols that change from professor to professor, or even from lecture to lecture) and then go on to say things like "...and the proof is trivial" or "...it obviously follows that...", and I'd sit there wanting to shout "NO, NO it's not obvious!"<p>Finally, I'd find a tutor to explain to me what it was I was missing, and it really WAS obvious. If only it had been taught that way in the first place!<p>Admittedly, not everyone has the same learning style, but the classes I took seemed really tailored towards the students who already had the intuition that I lacked.