There was a day when I was taking trigonometry that the instructor assigned groups for us to work in. The problem was finding the area of a pentagon or something similar with multiple sides. We were given all the necessary variables.

I've never enjoyed group work, but my group seemed like they were okay with the basic calculations, so I wasn't too nervous. Everything was going smoothly, for the first five minutes. Once we got to manipulating equations to work the way we needed, everything went awry. I knew the way to work the problem out, but I guess the teacher in me took over and insisted that people need to learn from mistakes, rather than learn from being told.

It didn't take long for that mindset to wear off. Despite my insistence that the problem was simple and that the equations were straightforward, my group mates put numbers where they didn't belong just to see if they might by luck reach the correct answer.

Long story short, I ended up getting frustrated. I said, "You're making this way more complicated than it is. Just work the problem."




But, this was never an entry about trigonometry, anyway.





ps: still working on the new layout.

OH
An analogy!
» middaymoon on 2011-03-14 10:26:27

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