User: Remarkably Dark

It's not about violence. TV sucks. The sooner you permanently get rid of it, the better.

TV sucks up all the cognitive energy that you and your children could be using on other stuff.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xPEt5OTR6Vc

There was probably once a time when you couldn't do an addition problem like 93498 + 47943. Then, at a certain point, you probably realized that it wasn't all that difficult. Just a simple extension of what you'd do when solving a problem like 98 + 13.

Math formulas are the same. Stop thinking about how long and hard and complicated and impossible to understand it is and just start decoding it. It's kind of like a long word on a spelling test. You've probably noticed that long words are not always harder to spell than short words. For example, it's much easier to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism" than "fishhook", only because "antidisestablishmentarianism" follows all the conventions, but you might be a little unsure when you come to "fishhook". Now picture some wide-eyed little kid who is asked to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism" during a spelling bee. He gets so intimidated by the word's length that he doesn't realized how easy it is.

The same thing goes on when you see a big scary formula. You spend so much time anticipating it that you never get down to understanding it. Change your attidude from "easily frightened" to "earnest and determined" and you'll do better.

May I reccomend the following websites:

xkcd.com - This will make you think math and science type people are cool and interesting. That will make you want to become one.

betterexplained.com - Cool website. Read some of the explanations, even if they're not for anything that you're learning in your class, and you can feel like an undercover genius. This article might be good for you:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-mindset-for-math/

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/thedilbertblog/2007/07/hypnosis.html

Christians, watch this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o