There are a few reasons why I do math.
- I suck at memorization. This makes science, history, and literature studies hard for me.
- I'm very good at learning by doing. I can remember a procedure very well after just doing it a few times.
- I'm clever. I have been using my wits to work my way through math classes for the longest time. Why study when you can re-derive all of the things that you would need to know?
All of this concluded in the Differential Equations comprehensive exam (which I failed, again). The way that the professor that I took Advanced DE from tests is strictly about wrote memorization. The test format is at follows:
- define X out of these Y terms,
- state what X out of these Y theorems are,
- and prove X out of these Y theorems (findable in the book).
There are no 'problems' to work. There are no original theorems to prove which would require the use of the student's intuition. This is the only math class that I have ever taken that has ever been this way, and it's very hard for me. Compound that with the fact that I hardly understood the material when I took the class 1.5 years ago, because of the teacher's accent and the natural abstruseness of the material, and you might be able to understand why I did poorly.
