High School Is Not College
Some of the study methods which worked in high school will not work at JMU - and certainly not in your mathematics courses. In particular, you cannot learn everything in class from your professor. The pace of the course is such that the professor is only a guide on your journey. It is your journey. The main feature that distinguishes college from high school is that you must learn on your own, outside the classroom. Therefore,
You have to read the text.
The pace is too fast and the material is too deep for your professor to tell you everything you need to learn. Your time in the classroom is assumed by a college professor to be only a small part of the time you spend on the course. (Incidentally, "reading the text" does not mean just trying the homework problems and then checking back for examples when you get stuck. This will not give the depth of understanding to earn more than a mediocre grade. It means reading the entire exposition and carefully following the motivation and line of reasoning presented.)
Falling behind can be disastrous.
Do some work on the course every day. Consult the course schedule, and read about what will be happening in the next class, so that attending that class will be useful. And work on the week's homework assignment from the start of the week. Do not get into a situation where you have to cram for an exam. The single most helpful thing before an exam is a good night's sleep.
It is extremely common (despite warnings like this) for students who have had some calculus before to coast along (under the pressure of other courses) thinking "yeah, yeah, I know that" and not to do the daily detail work required. Then at some point they find that the ground under them has slipped away. They discover that the level and depth at which they are expected to understand things is different than it was in high school. The course has irretrievably passed them by and they must settle for a grade and a quality of understanding which is lower than they had hoped.
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