JESSICA: Previously, the way I used to approach Psets was at MIT, I had been encouraged to work with others, work with others. And so we would all get in a group, get the Pset and in about two hours, we are done with the P set for a class. But I realized that each time that was the approach I took to learning. When it came to the exam, I would be struggling on the exam because I didn’t fully understand the concepts but I got by with other people’s help.
And so I decided to turn that around. Rather than coming to the group and getting all the answers from there, what I would do was I would take the P set on my own, alone and I would work through it. So if, let’s say there were four steps to solving this differential equation and I understood step one and two, I would get through those and then I would leave the gap for where I didn’t understand and then complete the rest.
And this was very helpful because I know exactly where the problem is and I know how to address it. So even when I meet the group, now it’s like, OK, step one we know you do this, step two we know you do this, but what is the transition to three? That’s helpful not just for P setting in groups but also in office hours. So that the instructors have a sense of where exactly you don’t know so they can feel your knowledge gap.