How CHE 320 Saved My Sanity

As I sit in class attempting to learn I find myself confused about material which is not at all uncommon even back at Purdue. Yet I also find myself highly intimidated. The professor is up at the board writing all types of equations, some of which I understand, most of which I don't. All the while the students around me are following (seemingly) along without a hitch. I struggle for hours before tutorial classes with assignments and make zero progress while they walk into class never having looked at the assignment and solve it in 30 minutes. I know I'm not nearly as smart as the students here, I know I'm not nearly as well prepared to take the courses that I'm enrolled in. Before my departure for India I spent countless hours sending countless emails back and forth to IIT and Purdue faculty to get my courses approved. All the while the Purdue professors were coming back to me telling me what material wasn't covered in the IIT courses that I would still be expected to know and how the overlap isn't strong enough so I may have to take an independent study etc. Now after finally getting here I realize it isn't Purdue that should have a problem, rather IIT should have looked at my previous course work and said, here is what she is eligible to take because a lot of the time I don't feel like I have the prerequisites to be sitting in those classrooms. Let me tell you for four hours a day getting hammer with material that doesn't make since, you start to feel a little bit... how do you say... dumb. All of my friends in class tell me time and time again that everyone is in the same situation, that no one understands, but I find it very hard to believe. With one student I got to talking about how I don't feel prepared for the courses and how I really should be in Mass Transfer I not II (honestly I had never heard of a mass transfer coefficient before... Purdue what are you thinking!?!). I mentioned how Purdue is much more application driven and IIT seems more theory and math driven. He agreed and stated that the theory is important so you can design systems and programs and such. I smiled and agreed that theory is important, but at Purdue we learn how to use the programs to solve problems, not necessarily how to make the program. He then asked, well anyone can use the program if you just have the user manual, so what exactly are you learning?? I can't even tell you how deflated I felt after that comment because I couldn't tell him. I all of a sudden felt as though two and a half years at Purdue was almost worthless in comparison. I mulled a lot of this over for a while and got myself back in higher spirits about my knowledge and trudge to class everyday hoping that maybe the symbols will click together this time. They still haven't but I'm still trying. Then another conversation with another classmate brought up the courses we take at Purdue and I mentioned CHE 320, the statistics course ChemE's take. He said they've never taken, nor do they take a statistics course. My face lit up!! I quickly asked, "so you don't know how to do a DOE or perform a t-test on data??" He looked at me confused and said, "no idea." This was followed by a series of questions from me regarding, Chi squared function, normal distributions, and optimization techniques none of which he had ever heard of. I felt like I was walking on clouds!!! I finally knew something an IITian didn't!!! Sounds small but let me tell you how wonderful it was to know that Purdue isn't worthless (it really isn't and I know that) but it was so refreshing to be able to trust my own knowledge again. I am smart... sort of... sometimes... okay maybe just in statistics... and that's only in comparison to IITians because lets face it, I'm not good at statistics either. lol
Study Study Study - Mid Sems start in 4 days (yikes!)_