Hello Math Majors,
I hope that you are staying healthy and happy as the spring semester continues. At this point, you should be pretty well settled into your spring semester course schedule, and I would be happy happy to talk to you about your options if something is not going well.
Last week, I wrote about four different things that I believe you need to do to help fully engage with your classes: 1) maximizing course attendance, 2) reading textbooks and other course materials, 3) completing weekly reviews of course materials, and 4) visiting course instructors during office hours. This week I want to focus on the importance of maximizing your course attendance.
The important of course attendance should seem obvious, but in my experience, a lack of course attendance has been a major factor for many students who struggle academically. There are many reasons or causes for poor course attendance, and if the reason or cause is beyond your control, you need to tell some about it. Your course instructors and I can help if you are struggling with class attendance, or we can help connect you to resources that can help with that cause of your poor attendance.
Personally, I was sick enough one semester that I needed to miss more than a week of class, and I would have struggled more than I did if I had not contacted my course instructors. I can also remember struggling with attendance in a class or two where I did not enjoy the material or like the instruction style. I know that my grades in those courses suffered when I did not attend those courses, and I wish I could go back and change my decisions. The lesson here is that sometimes you just have to go class whether you want to or not. However, I know that it is easier for me to write that than for you to do that, and you will probably face times when it takes a significant amount of willpower to attend a course meeting.
If there are physical barriers to regularly attending classes, like a work schedule or personal schedule, please come talk to me or your course instructors about it.
For the Spring 2023 semester, I am taking in-person, Zoom, and phone meetings in 45-minute blocks from 8:30 am to 12:15 pm and 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm every weekday outside of my drop-in advising hours, and I am taking drop-in meetings via Zoom only on Mondays and on Fridays from 1 pm to 3 pm.
You can schedule a meeting with me by using the Student Success Hub via this link, by calling the College of Arts and Sciences Academic and Career Advising Center at 402-472-4190, by calling me at 402-472-4319, or by emailing me at dpellatz@unl.edu. You can find instructions for how to access and schedule meetings in the Student Success Hub system here. You can also find information about my virtual only drop-in meetings at https://cas.unl.edu/drop-in-advising-schedule.
Best wishes, Doug
Math Department Events
The Math Department has many upcoming events that might be of interest to you along with a weekly (or almost weekly) colloquium series. A listing of all upcoming Math Department events can be found at https://events.unl.edu/math/upcoming/.
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