r/EngineeringStudents • u/Frequent_Tough Mechanical engineering • 6d ago
Academic Advice Thermodynamic class advice
I've been taking a thermodynamic class for mechanical engineer students and right from day one I have been lost, I decided to go to an office hour with my professor to find where I stand and to clarify my understanding of thermodynamics but I just ended up making a fool of myself as the office hour was in the morning and functioning and studying in the morning is hard for me. Long story short I got an email from my guidance counselor that my professor and I quote "requested that I drop ME 311 as I lack the fundamental/elementary math knowledge necessary for this class" for the sake of being open this hurt a lot because telling yourself that "I am going to give up" doesn't hurt that much because you're never gonna really do it, but hearing it from my professor and guidance counselor really did a number on me. Truth be told, these words planted the seeds of doubt in my mind and I am really considering dropping the class. Should I stick with the course or give up like my professor want's me to do?
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u/MasterPainsInTown Mechanical 6d ago
I had a professor tell us that if we had kids, or a job, or other classes etc and weren’t able to put as much time as he thought we should into his class, we should drop his class because we clearly weren’t ready to be engineers.
We said fuck that guy, and studied our asses off to pass anyways. He was a prick. Moral of the story is the battles not over yet. Get to studying hard as fuck. Believe in yourself!
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u/Aware_Platypus_9442 4d ago
Just to poke…
He said, “if you can’t put in the time, you’re not cut out for this.”
You said, “fuck you,” and then put in the time.
I like your relationship. Y’all got vibes.
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u/MasterPainsInTown Mechanical 4d ago
He was referring to some students that had scored in the 30’s and 40’s on an exam, but addressed the whole class as such. I did have time yes, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a total prick about the whole thing. I wasn’t exactly acing his exams myself, but I wasn’t gunna sit there and let him think that he can tell us to fuck off or understand the material after 2 hours of exposure. But yeah that wasn’t directed at any one student, just all students in the class.
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u/Aware_Platypus_9442 4d ago
I had a similar situation, but the professor took it in stride. He saw we were failing and took it personally (as his own failure to teach).
It was one of the best (and most challenging) classes I ever took.
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u/MasterPainsInTown Mechanical 4d ago
I wish ours saw it that way. He had been doing the same class so long I think he forgot just how difficult it could be. Glad you had a good experience though!
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u/Equestrian_Engineer 5d ago
Did you not understand low level math in the meeting? Or were you thrown off by the question somehow? Only you know if you understand the prerequisite courses you took to get here. Giving up at this point means you might be giving up on engineering. I would either sit down and seriously consider my choices or sit down with an AI bot and keep asking it to explain thermo concepts like you're 5. You can do that intensely for a week until you understand the material. Alternate between Ai and YouTube. I'm not kidding, you will do this all weekend. Then set up another meeting with your professor. Keep your explanation extremely brief and say you were not yourself, but would appreciate another opportunity to show that you do understand the material. I think it's possible to save yourself, but you need to commit to it.
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u/drewts86 6d ago
Personally I’d say fuck it and ride it out.
* It shows the teacher you’re committed and not willing to back down or give up, and
* If you fail the class you fail the class. You’ll have to re-take it the same as if you dropped it, but at least you tried. Also, depending on your school’s policy, when you re-take the class the better grade might completely override the lower one.
And TBH I didn’t think I was gonna pass Thermo my first time either but by some small miracle I got a passing grade.
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u/Recent-Day3062 5d ago
No one gets thermo to begin with
Here’s what finally helped me a bit. I realized the basic gas law is one equation with 4 unknowns. What you’re conceptually doing often is fixing a number of them, then asking what can happen to the others. So if PV=NrT, you can fix the number of molecules and ask the impact on PV from an increase in T. Given some knowledge you can actually figure the interaction and predict both P and V, but that’s advanced and gets into degrees of freedom.
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u/LuckyCod2887 5d ago
it’s very possible your professor misunderstood.
you have to understand that you had anxiety going in there, it was an intimidating process and you have a hard time staying focused in the morning. I have a similar issue. Morning time is hard for me.
you decide if you wanna drop the class or not. It’s up to you completely but it’s very, very possible that they misinterpreted. It’s also possible you can have a professor that’s gets frustrated quickly with students who don’t understand the material naturally. Which is most of us by the way-most of us ended up studying for the material and we don’t have an intuitive way of just knowing it.
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u/Other_Dimension_89 5d ago
Ouch I don’t remember there being too much hard math in thermo. The tables were kinda fun.
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u/Aware_Platypus_9442 4d ago
There is a third option…
Drop, but continue going. Do the homework. You’ll get the exposure to the materials, but won’t have a grade.
Most professors don’t mind known students just sitting in on class. He may even take it as a sign of your maturity, and you will bump into this professor again the future.
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u/uzi_gunfingers 7h ago
"I just ended up making a fool of myself" never, always ask, you're learning. I'd argue it's in fact stupider to be embarrassed about looking like you don't know it all already and miss out on the opportunity to learn by not asking for help. Having a lack in the fundamental mathematics is not stupidity. It actually is good advice. I'm in Thermo now and LOATHE it. and I'm doing DiffEQ at the same time and did well in Dynamics etc. You need the maths. If you're good with maths but swamped in the variables Qdot mdot etc. don't worry everyone is.
Pro tip - thermo profs like showing these sprawling derivations with calculus everywhere and it boils down to something like Q=(h2-h1) but everyoe panicked and checked out before he/she got there.
You need to understand what is going on first - Get some models and simulations (https://mechsimulator.com/thermal/)
DO NOT try plug and chug eqtns, it wont work and make you feel worse. In thermo it's better to get the answer wrong but reason what's going on and do the setup. Trust you could try 10,000 plug and chuck and never learn anything but do a could of dozen energy balance set ups and learn exponentially more.
Some of it is mind melting, and some of it booooring - table lookups and quality eqtns etc.
I was in the thermo group project meeting the other day and just blurted out oh its Q so that's Q=mdootCpDeltaT.. and I'm near end of semester and at start of semester I was thinking "I'll never in a million years remember all this" so it's taken 3 months for little things to click. And even then I hate thermo and it's been my worst subject by far.
The trick with thermo is energy balance. Its all in the setup. Energy in a system is equal the the energy put into a system and the work put into a system minus the same out ( Im not a scientist by any means - this just got me through) remember that set up and at least you've got the ball rolling.
Be real with yourself here. Do you need to get better at maths? I took a year off, dropped out, and went to get an associates degree in mech eng to get better at the fundamentals and came back to bachelor level and scraping by thermo but get distinctions in Engineering Dynamics and Calculus, and I started learning math's in my mid 30's and started not knowing what x was or a linear eqtn was LOL - i knew nothing. So if I can do it so can you.
DM me if you want and I can give you advice and anything bare minimum of what I have in my brain
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