Re: Back to School/Work/Other Calculator Poll Message #56 Posted by Glenn Becker on 9 Sept 2013, 1:10 p.m., in response to message #54 by Pal G.
I hope this won't go overlong. It's ... complicated.
As a teenager I was dead set on a career in science, most likely astronomy. However, I was seduced away by theatre and went on a long (all the way to a Ph.D.!) translunar injection into the arts.
Around the time I turned 40, and following a couple of marriages/divorces, that had ALL fizzled out, and I started turning back towards science.
I currently work in IT for a prestigious (as in, I can't believe they let me work here!) scientific institution. Since I can take courses and get reimbursed as long as they are germane to my work, I started taking math courses to bolster my scientific programming skills. It had been almost 30 years since my last math course, so it was a rocky road. I got up to multivariable calculus but that unraveled when my mother died. It was just too much.
Currently I have backtracked and am trying to shore up my algebra/trig skills (the shakiness of which had REALLY proved a stumbling block in calculus classes) so that I can attack calculus again and then, finally, move beyond. I'm working through a very good book called Basic Mathematics by Serge Lang. It's kind of like pre-calculus from a more advanced perspective.
I love doing this. Love, love, love it. And now I am taking astronomy courses online. Life is back to my pre-17-year-old trajectory!
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