Why I Decided to Scare the Pants Off My Students

Howdy from Jaclyn in Aggieland!

Today was the first day of Business Mathematics II a.k.a. Cowboy Calculus a.k.a. "The Next Five Weeks are Going to be SOO MUCH FUN!" This class is very algebra-intensive and the majority of college students do not know how to do algebra... At all... So, after talking about the syllabus and the "Getting to Know You Assignment," I tried to put the fear of God into them. Here is a screen shot of my "You Must Know Algebra" slide.

I normally do not take the "scare them senseless about math" approach, but this week is going to be very difficult for a lot of them and my hope is that they will take initiative to stay on top of things and succeed in the next five weeks.

Here are some of the things I told them:

• As soon as you have a question, you need to ask. This class is too fast-paced for you to "figure it out" on your own.
• If you fall behind, you will drown.
• Most of you will have to spend several hours a day practicing, not an hour or two here or there, to do well in this class.
• If you don't take me seriously, we will all be sad.

After this, I gave them a quiz over algebra and the syllabus. They were allowed to use the notes I told them to print off and bring with them to class.  Here is a picture of the first few problems... Oh, the horrors I saw! They almost made my eyes bleed!

The back side asked them to solve polynomial equations and gave them up to 5 bonus points for correctly answering questions about the syllabus. Hopefully this was added incentive to take me seriously and start their algebra review. We will find out!

After this, we covered 8 pages of notes. I usually only cover 5-6 if I have the entire class time to lecture. This means I was moving at a very brisk pace. I think if they can survive the first few days, they will be fine.

Do you think I sufficiently scared them?

Thanks and Gig 'Em!