Comment Re:like anything else.. (Score 1) 580
So in the end the first problem with poor college science and math performance is poor elementary school education. I worked and worked through Calc 1 and 2 in college, enjoyed it, and got Cs. My professors were wonderful. I was working on a problem with her during office hours and she stopped, looked me in the eyes and said "What's 12 x 9?". I was flummoxed. She said that if I didn't know that the way I breathed it was going to be hard going. It's 108 (how many of you knew that before you read the answer?).
The second problem is that doing anything well at a high level is hard. That's the difference between one of us noodling away on a guitar and Eric Clapton. One of the issues in any discussion of education is the assumption that with the proper education we can turn out Feynmans and Claptons as needed. No, you can't. A poor education and stymie a genius, but it can't create one.
The third problem is motivation. It has to be the most fun you can have standing up. As a previous poster pointed out - do you really want to collect data for six days a week for 9 months and produce one little paper for your effort? If you learn to sing really well like Robin Thicke you can make a music video with Emily Ratajkowski strutting around naked in front of you. Edward O. Wilson watched bugs. He loves watching bugs.
BTW as an example of the second problem - if you watch the blurred lines videos, the censored and the uncensored you'll note that Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. make it look easy and natural twice - differently. Then they did it again on The Voice TV show. That's really hard to do. No one seems to thing that all all I have to to do is pass some classes and I can do that.