The Secret of My Calculus Course

Listen up, kids. I'm about to let you in a secret. Maybe all you business and social science majors are wondering why you're required to take calculus? Officially, it's because it's a prereq for the stats class that your major requires. But if you ask anyone who has taken this allegedly-calculus-based statistics class, they'll tell you that you don't really need to know calculus for it. So why are you taking my course?

It's because a lot of those majors are really popular, so they can afford to be selective. This calculus course is not rocket science; in fact, it contains roughly 20% of the calculus that you would need to study rocket science (yet it does not count at all towards the aerospace engineering degree -- it is that lame of a calculus class*). If you're lacking either the basic algebra skills (and I do mean basic) or the motivation to succeed in this course, frankly, they just don't want you. If you can't get your act together enough to pass my calculus class with a decent grade, then maybe you should think about majoring in gym or art history or some other major that is not swamped with potential students -- and that doesn't require calculus.

Nothing personal, that's just how it is. I'll do my best to give you every opportunity to learn calculus, but you're going to have to do the work and maybe brush up on your algebra skills. Just sayin'.


*It is also so lame of a calculus course that it does not count towards admission to our business school's graduate program. That's right, the calculus course that they require for undergraduates will not count towards getting you in to grad school.