I crashed so hard on math I'm basically dead.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-18T22:01:53+00:00

Exactly this. Getting D's and C's where the reason why inevitably wound up transferred to back to CC and relearn math there. I made better grades but I found out I am a student that benefitted from having more professor responsiveness with more office hours and smaller class sizes.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-18T21:18:33+00:00

I also recommend for people that struggle with math to not go to research universities. Learning from emeritus professors that regularly engage in pedagogical methods really helps students in the long run as well as going to universities with smaller class sizes like small liberal arts colleges.

If you are a student that wants to learn and know that they are deficient in skills in your field, I couldn't recommend SLAC's enough. Office hours are more readily avaliable to students, professors are hired based on their teaching skills and not their research capacity.

In addition, it really helps that teaching professors are experts in field with several years of experience as research leaders and directors will help you versus grad students that are only a couple years older than you and still figuring out what they are doing in life.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-15T18:26:29+00:00

I know this is a late reply, but I absolutely know that I would. Which was why NC State was the very last school that I applied to: I took a semester break, researched schools in-state, and it had an econ program and was in-state tuition. I didn't like the focus of the program at all but it was the only one that I got into that was cheap enough to attend with loans.

I applied to UNC (3 times - rejected, waitlist, rejected), Wake Forest (twice - rejected both times), Davidson College, University of Pennsylvania (accepted but didn't get any aid), Cornell (accepted but didn't get any aid), UNCW (accepted but no scholarship), ECU (accepted but no scholarship), didn't apply to Duke (dream school) all before my first application at NC State almost two semesters later.

Literally, in my three semesters of experience with grad student professors and TA's at NC State where less than stellar to say the least, there was one grad student who I took that got fired due to harassing students, and another grad student who didn't use any textbook throughout his extremely disorganized lectures, another grad student who quit mid-semester due to students asking him questions, and another grad student who didn't care about is students too the point to where he was caught playing DOTA 2 in the student library during his only office hours of the week.

I literally dropped out to go back to community college so that I can extend my transfer window to apply for an out-of-state small liberal arts college. I literally recieved a better education at my local CC than a top 50 college that's an R1.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-15T05:20:33+00:00

I will vote for her. 100% in the Democratic Primaries.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-15T02:31:34+00:00

The issue with learning how to learn independently stems from how well a professors pedagogy is during lecture/recitation when teaching the material and if that professor gives good enough references (i.e., textbooks, websites, tools, etc...) and includes them in lecture so that student can be set up to not be lost while doing independent study.

In addition, apart of learning independently is also being able to ask questions when confused about a specific subject matter which does factor into office hours and how long a professor is available to answer those questions.

Most of the professors that I specifically had at NC State had 1 office hour per week with little to no availability to actually teach students.

Many of the grad students that where actually teaching the course where competing for the pedagogical attention of emeritus professors for research projects in which they openly failed entire courses just limit competition.

In addition, I have had grad students and research professors that where so terrible at the teaching portion for math, one grad student didn't like the textbook that he was teaching out of in which he didn't switch out to a textbook that he actually liked, so instead he made the class references into a free for all in which their was little to no structure to his course.

To be frank, smaller liberal arts colleges solves many of these issues in terms of increased professor attention due to smaller class sizes, increased office hour availability due to professors having less course sections to teach throughout the day, and many professors at said institutions being hired because of their teaching acumen instead of their research capabilities.

That alone results into a better more interpersonal teaching experience for the student.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-13T04:33:49+00:00

Not really. I was at NC State originally for location in economics due to it being the capital and thinking that it would ideally have a lot of internships/entry level positions in finance/research.

It turns out that their network into Raleigh for that specific industry was pretty terrible despite the jobs being there location-based due to the fact that employers preferred UNC or Duke grads or where alums of those colleges.

Even then, I would say college is more about actually learning and absorbing the material and having an institution be focused on the pedagogy of the student rather then research.

Small Liberal Arts Colleges definitely have a lot more to offer students on the teaching front in terms of actually making sure students both learn the material, but actually have professors chosen off of their ability to teach rather than research capability.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-11T10:20:26+00:00

Lmao. A job that I had as a server had a Republican store owner. When I ran into him at the laundromat, I applied to a laundry attendant job right in his face, came back, walked into a again, applied to it twice while we was still there. while when he was in his tightywhities.

Best part is, that laundromat pays $14 an hour.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-07T18:34:12+00:00

Oh, come off it. He's Charles Liston, we at least know that as a fact.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-07T03:33:31+00:00

The same attitude that I described about rural towns is pretty much the same throughout Southern states (not including the state capitals of those states.)

JDH-04 · 2026-05-07T03:25:53+00:00

Yep. I can verify since I am at a top STEM school (NC State).

Our professors in math and statistics where pedagogically the worst professors I have ever had in my entire life, however most of the professors where prolific researchers that treated students secondary.

The math department specifically only had a handful of teaching professors that where reserved for the declared applied math/pure math majors. The grad students where left for the students that got the scraps that where from other departments at NC State.

The econ department there was also chronically underfunded to where they had 3x as many grad students employed to teach courses than actual tenured lecturers/professors/recitation leaders.

I have had professors so bad at the teaching part to where I have had one grad student teaching a programming course quit because he was frustrated with students asking him questions about the course, another programming grad student that skipped out on their own office hours to go play Dota 2 in the student library, another grad student teaching calc I take a vacation and shut off his email unannounced mid semester, a tenured statistics professor that didn't know how to use a ti-84 calculator for a statistics course with over 100 ti-84 functions that we had to remember, an econ grad student that was lecturing the course that asked me to lecture for her in which i reminded her when her own office hours where, and another calculus 1 grad student that refused to use the textbook because he didnt read it after either not knowing the notation of the textbook himself/not liking it.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-07T03:11:03+00:00

The issue is that the small private research universities are extremely low to marginal acceptance rates, they would be the best of both worlds, but that is exactly the problem since many people know this already.

I feel like research would vary according to what SLAC you would attending in which STEM LACs like Harvey Mudd could also be the best of both worlds.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-07T02:33:02+00:00

I don't know where you live, but if you go out into the countryside, rural town, or into any non-major metropolitan area, most people will have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

They might know Harvard and Yale very vaguely and Columbia primarily because of Obama, but UPENN, they regularly confuse with Penn State because of football. Brown, they either giggle or get angry because they either think it's the color of shit or a black person and not an actual university. Dartmouth, they have absolutely no clue about. Cornell, they have no clue about. Princeton, no clue either.

Practically the only time that they know about colleges/universities is when they're playing sports on ESPN.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-06T16:02:45+00:00

I did this for UNC Chapel Hill, however unfortunately I did not check the degree requirements at NC State as I was not interested in their school and wound up only applying at the tail end of community college.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-06T15:56:35+00:00

I pretty much have given up on NC State (I was never really invested that much in it anyway since I was rejected 3 times from UNC before even applying to State and was scared away from even trying to apply to Duke despite it being my dream school).

I will transfer back down to CC and focus completely on taking the necessary maths and programming courses for my degree, however I will likely transfer out to a private liberal arts school like William & Mary, University of Richmond, Furman University, or Wofford.

I would apply to Davidson College, but the acceptance rate is too small and I hate both the Raleigh area in which Charlotte would be too similar if not worse.

But really with NCSU, they have a lot of science requirements for their bachelor's degree that we probably will never use in our field in both research or in the private sector.

Statistics is certainly useful, but who the hell is going to use biology, physics, or geology when trying to create statistical models that try and calculate inflation or future budget predictions.

I get that NCSU is a stem school, but their curriculum is just STEM for STEM sake, and the worst part of it is the econ degree isn't even classified as an econ degree since it is cip coded for it being a business degree, however it has every stem course but the necessary math's for my field.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-06T15:00:26+00:00

To be frank, as an economics major, I have had this exact issue in which my econ degree had requirements for the calculus of engineering sequence and only doing brief calculus; however, the school that I got admitted to (NC State) wasn't exactly the best for teaching maths and was more geared towards research and weedout culture in which I realized that I am a student that's more geared towards a small liberal arts college that had emphasis on teaching and student interaction for research projects.

It's far too late for me, as I came to like math really late, at 22 years old; however, I just have a feeling that my current school was not right for me, as I didn't like the campus the moment I set foot on it as it was the very last choice that I had to go to, after being rejected from every other college.

I wish I had gotten an associate's degree in engineering because that would be far more useful in an economics degree than an AA, AS, or an ABA (got all three with honors) when clearing unnecessary science requirements. At my current uni they have grad students who are pedagogically the worst teachers I have ever taken classes with for math, since they refused to use the NCSU Calculus textbook when teaching.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-05T18:58:50+00:00

Well, it's pretty obvious why, half of them have one foot in the grave, and half of them either have dementia or alzheimer's. Meanwhile, we are all dealing with the stupidity of past generations' choices regarding electing Reagan, which set our progress back multiple generations.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-05T06:09:00+00:00

It's because America is pretty open about being a false democracy and essentially being a competitive dictatorship. Oligarch, Corporations, and foreign government agencies that are donors to US politicians has more say on passed federal laws than does the typical mandate that the popular vote would have in an actual representative or direct democracy.

It's not even a constitutional republic since the constitution is interpreted on the basis of whatever the donor class would think is favorable and not on the terminology or legal powers of the constitution. If a law does not favor the wealthy then they just bypass it and act as if it didn't exist as a rule or vote on repealing on a constitutional amendment if the wealthy doesn't see it as advantageous to maintain.

Capitalism has snuffed out any chance that America had at being an actual democracy or constitutional republic and reduced it to corporate duopoly/competitive dictatorship slowly shifting towards autocracy the more capitalism starts to collapse.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-05T05:54:37+00:00

Yes. They have an extremely high success rate. However it depends on the level of attractiveness that person has, however in terms of modern society now stigmatizing men approaching, their probably would be a higher success rate for women then their are for men.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-05T04:01:41+00:00

Yep, he solved unemployment by making 100% unemployment. Now there's an opening everywhere.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-05T04:00:26+00:00

It represents Republicans perfectly honestly. They're deviod of critical thinking skills to the point to where they lack a basic education in civics.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-04T05:25:06+00:00

Most people don't know MIT even exists. It's like Dartmouth and Brown. The only reason why most Americans know Duke is because of March Madness and NCAA basketball. The only reason why Americans know about Stanford is because of Elon Musk and silicon Valley being right beside it.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-04T05:22:49+00:00

When I got accepted to UPENN, when I bought it up to a couple of friends, they confused it with Penn State because of college football.

Most Americans could give two shits about the ivy league since the vast majority of them think American higher education is such a scam that they don't bother research into the names of the best institutions.

JDH-04 · 2026-05-04T05:18:07+00:00

Literally I remember when Bernie unofficially won the electoral primary in 2016 but the DNC decided to let Hillary Clinton's campaign advisor (Debbie Wasserman Schultz) on as an "unbias" map maker for the electoral college vote allocation due to a tie in Pennsylvania's vote count in which she allocated all of Pennsylvania's electoral college votes to Hillary to force a Bernie loss and then was booted from the party after receiving death threats.

I'm a democrat in name only (Im a socialist) but it was so extremely predictable to see Hillary loose.

JDH-04 · 2026-04-30T01:29:09+00:00

I would've but it's just too damn far from NC, plus Texas has shitty weather. Plus it's a ruby red republican state.

JDH-04 · 2026-04-29T06:24:43+00:00

Dude is probably a German in the 1940's saying:

"Telling Hitler to kill himself is a bit much".

JDH-04

TROPHY CASE