I’m hard at work these days studying for the general GRE and have found that maths, other than practical arithmetic, have a way of slipping away from memory with utter thoroughness if they haven’t been practiced in awhile. And as is often the case, my restless habit of constantly piling new projects on top of others I’m already working on led me to start studying in earnest far too last-minute.

The Princeton Review GRE books are pretty helpful (found in the reference section of any good library), but they seem to me to focus more on ways to game the test than they do re-instilling a thorough understanding of the mathematical processes and ideas behind the questions. This may work well for many people, but it was leaving me feeling lost and confused at times since there are so many kinds of gaming techniques that it’s hard to remember them all, especially if you don’t feel you have a good grasp of the kind of problem you’re solving to begin with. I expect this is the same for many of you as well: my memory won’t hold onto a fact or idea unless it fits into some larger idea or system. If I don’t understand the why, I just can’t seem to remember the what.

So I was feeling pretty stressed out by the feeling of working very hard but gaining too little, and decided I needed to back up and get a good solid grasp of the basic concepts again. The company that creates and administers the GRE has a list of Khan Academy lessons and practice sessions that pertain to the test posted on their website. They are so well designed, so well-explained, and they’re free, hooray! I feel so much better now about the progress I’m making, and re-discovering the fun of basic and intermediate algebra. Once I had gotten the hang of it, it had always seemed more like games than work to me!

So thank you from the bottom of my heart, Sal Khan and the good people at Khan Academy, you are the best. And yes, I will donate to your Indigogo campaign to fund courses on American government.

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