Introduction — Daily Momentum for STEM Life ›
Built from real tutoring experience, academic struggle, and long-term discipline, this series delivers short daily reflections that keep you focused, resilient, and moving forward through the hardest semesters.
Each entry is written to reset your mindset, sharpen your purpose, and remind you why you chose the STEM path.
Day 1: Why Most Americans Fail at Engineering Degrees ›
Day 1: Why Americans Fail at STEM Degrees: A Hard Truth About Engineering and Beyond
Okay, boys and girls, are you ready to learn why Americans suck at STEM degrees, specifically math, physics, and engineering? Even more specifically, engineering? Let’s break this down. You can relate this to math; you can relate this to physics.
Here’s the bona fide fact: the reason why the failure rate for engineering majors is so high, 50%, 60%, even 70%, is because most Americans approach education and science with beliefs instead of discipline. They think they can whine, cry, and badger their way into success, but science doesn’t care about your feelings.
Electricity doesn’t care about your political beliefs. Calculus doesn’t care if you’re a liberal or a conservative. You either know what you’re doing, or you don’t. Yet so many students fail because they refuse to do the work. They fail miserably and then think they can buy their way through.
Why Engineering Demands Integrity
Here’s why engineering is different. Engineers hold people’s lives in their hands. If you mess up a calculation, it’s not just your grade that’s at risk, real people could die. This is why professors won’t let lazy, dishonest students graduate with an engineering degree.
Professors are scientists. They’ve devoted their lives to truth, and they won’t compromise their integrity to pass a student who cheats, pirates books, or refuses to put in the effort.
I’ve seen it countless times, students who argue, complain, and expect to be handed a degree just because they’ve paid tuition or hired a private tutor. These students fail because they don’t understand that in engineering, you can’t fake it. You either know it, or you don’t.
Piracy and the Entitlement Problem
Let me address something else, pirating books. Some of you think it’s morally okay to pirate textbooks because they’re expensive. You justify stealing by saying publishers make too much money, but here’s the truth: you’re stealing from everyone involved in producing those books, from the authors to the printers to the staff managing distribution.
Pirating doesn’t just make you a criminal, it shows you lack the discipline and integrity needed to succeed in STEM. Scientists find solutions; they don’t make excuses. If you can’t afford a book, most schools have programs to help. But if your default response is to steal, you’re not engineer material.
The Mindset of Failure
This entitlement mindset, this belief that you can whine or badger your way into success, doesn’t work in STEM. Politics might bend to loud voices, but math and physics don’t. It’s black and white, right or wrong. Yet, so many of you were raised to think that never backing down, never admitting you’re wrong, is a sign of strength.
It’s not. It’s why over 50% of engineering students fail. They think they can argue their way out of a mistake, but science doesn’t care about your ego.
The Path to Success
To succeed as an engineer, you must do the work. It’s that simple. You have to put in the hours, master the material, and be honest with yourself about what you don’t know. If you cheat, pirate books, or refuse to admit when you’re wrong, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Becoming an engineer is like becoming a black belt in martial arts, it requires discipline, practice, and humility. You can’t buy it, and you can’t fake it.
Final Thoughts
Look, I know some of you might feel attacked, but I’m trying to help you. The sooner you realize that engineering demands integrity and hard work, the better your chances of succeeding. So stop making excuses, stop justifying bad behavior, and start doing the work.
Because in the end, STEM doesn’t care about your beliefs or excuses, it only cares about results. You’re either ready, or you’re not. Choose to be ready.
Day2: How to Succeed in Calculus ›
All right, kids. It’s time for day two of the Holy Bible of STEM right here. [laughter] Written by yours truly, first edition. All right. Day two. All right. All right. All right. Day two. Let’s read it. Day two. How to succeed in calculus, a practical guide.
Hey everybody, this is just a quick little lecture on how to succeed in calculus and how to study for calculus. I’m a professional private tutor for calculus and higher level math at the college level. Occasionally, I tutor high school students depending on the student and the level they are taking. AP stuff is not usually something I tutor. While it may sound like the same information, AP calculus and college calculus are very different.
If you are looking for an AP calculus tutor, find someone who specializes in high school level tutoring. A college tutor is not the right fit for AP calculus unless they are savvy with that information. I didn’t go to high school, so I don’t even know what high school AP stuff entails. I went straight to college and I understand advanced math at the college level.
I know the curriculums that college students follow and I’m an expert at helping them navigate those courses. I’m not an expert at high school material. However, if a high school student is taking an actual college course like linear algebra, vector calculus, differential equations, probability, or complex analysis, something higher, I might consider tutoring them. But it depends on the student.
Now, let me be clear. I am not a babysitter.
How to transition from pre calculus to calculus. When it comes to calculus, you are leaving pre calculus and stepping into a whole new world. So how do you study for this subject?
First of all, you’ve got to read the book. You might think you can skate by without reading it, but let me tell you that is not a good idea.
One. Prepare before the semester starts. Before the semester even begins, start educating yourself on the first two to four weeks of material. If you do not have a textbook or syllabus yet, just search for a calculus textbook online and find one. It is all the same information. Stop making excuses immediately.
Two. Stop making excuses. If you are already looking for reasons not to start, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Three. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for your own learning. You are not in high school anymore. High school, in many ways, is a glorified babysitting service where you are taught a lot of things you will never use. College is different. College is a prerequisite to employment.
Four. Take responsibility. Employers do not hire high school students because high school is just basic preparation. When you get to college, it is time to grow up. You have to think, I am an adult now. It is on me to succeed.
Imagine you are a bird being pushed out of the nest. Either you learn to fly or you get eaten by a predator. That is life. It is harsh, but it is true. We are animals living in a world where it is survival of the fittest.
I am not saying this to sound rude. I am telling you these things because I have been through them. If someone I respected, someone honest, intelligent, and not manipulative, had told me this when I was younger, my life might have been very different.
This comes from a podcast I did a couple years ago called How to Succeed in Calculus: A Practical Guide. I summarized the transcript into about a page of information for this book. The purpose is that you have something to read every day so you can get into the habit of doing something intellectual.
It is less about the content and more about building the habit of reading textbooks. The whole point of this book is to get you into textbooks and off the internet. Whether the textbook is digital or physical does not matter. The point is to get off social media platforms.
You are training to be professionals. Professionals do not become educated simply by watching videos online. This book was designed so that every day you can open it and read something meaningful.
It is similar to the math and physics materials I teach. Every day you open the book to a new problem and read it like a novel. You read it slowly and think about it.
I am showing you all the things you should know by junior year. It becomes a daily practice. You open to day one, read the daily material, then you look at a page in the crash course, then you go to the cheat sheet and review formulas.
Over a period of one or two years, if you read just a few pages a day, you can absorb an enormous amount of information that took me more than a decade to accumulate.
The message for day two is simple: prepare before the semester starts, do not make excuses, stop blaming others, and take responsibility.
Nobody can be taught. You can only choose to learn.
When you get angry at someone else, often what you are doing is trying to bury your own problems inside them. That will not help you. Responsibility means recognizing that your growth depends on the habits you build each day.
That is why the purpose of this daily reading is not only to learn mathematics but also to develop maturity, discipline, and consistency.
All right. Have a nice day. Do not forget to subscribe. If you want the book mentioned in the video, the physical copy can be mailed to you and you will also receive digital access and a lifetime code for the website while it is being built.
Check it out. Have a nice day and I will see you in the next one.
Next Day (coming soon) ›
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