Don't be Ashamed to Ask for Help
Date Written: June 19, 2024; Last Modified: June 19, 2024Many times, I’ve heard students say that they’ll spend dozens of hours on a single particularly tough homework assignment. Moreover, when I recommend working out many textbook exercises to my students, I am sometimes met with a response along the lines of, “But exercises take so long to do and to write out. Is that really a good use of my time?”
If you spend hours and hours on a single problem, that’s not efficient. I understand there’s a point of pride to being able to solve a problem completely organically and on your own, but that’s generally not the most productive thing to do, especially if you’re stuck.
You should definitely attempt each problem you can, but you should time yourself and set limits, after which you should discuss with classmates, reach out to the instructors, or look things up online. Going back to the intent behind exercises, the primary intent of problem writers is almost never for you, the student, to organically rediscover profound insights shared by many mathematicians before you. The intent is that you find these insights one way or another, organically or not.