18.701 is an easy course，but

Delong Meng：I thought since I did the IMO, and since I’m at MIT with all these resources, I can do well in math. Freshman year, I think I made some really bad mistakes in approaching math: I just it was just like MOP [Math Olympiad Program] where people compete with others and solve problems. I didn’t even know what it meant to learn math. Since a lot of people took 18.701, I also took 18.701. But it turned out that a lot of people had learned linear algebra or group theory before, so taking 18.701 was good for them, but I didn’t have experience in any math beyond high school math. I found it very hard. Even then I still wanted to just study math: I thought that in high school I did math to get into college, but now I got into MIT, maybe I should just work hard. What really killed me was commutative algebra. I took it sophomore year, and thought it was a good class, but it turned out I actually didn’t understand it at all. After that class I took more math classes. I don’t think I actually understood them.