My experience using my own textbook for the first time
This is a long overdue post. Last fall, I used my own textbook—A Mathematics Boot Camp for Science and Engineering Students—in class for the first time. I had intended to reflect on the experience earlier, but got distracted. So here it is.
Before the semester began, I was genuinely excited. The book was written specifically for students like mine: science and engineering majors who need a solid mathematical foundation. The structure of the course was straightforward. Students were asked to read assigned sections before class, including the worked examples. The exercises were then designed to follow the same strategies demonstrated in those examples. If you read the section carefully, the path forward should have been clear.
What I observed, however, was discouraging.
When students got stuck on an exercise problem—which happened often—the default reaction was to search online, watch a YouTube video, or ask an AI chatbot. Almost none of them went back to the book. In many cases, it was clear they had not read it at all. The exact resource they needed, purpose-built for their course and sitting right in front of them, was simply ignored.
I understand the appeal. A YouTube video is engaging. An AI chatbot responds instantly and sounds confident. A search engine delivers answers in seconds. A textbook, by contrast, feels slow. It does not adapt to you. It does not simplify itself when you look confused. It simply sits there, asking you to meet it on its own terms. For a generation raised on immediate, personalized, on-demand information, that can feel like an unreasonable demand.
But it isn’t. In fact, it is one of the most important—and most neglected—skills a student can develop.
When you read carefully, you are not just absorbing information; you are building a structure. A well-written textbook develops ideas in a deliberate sequence, each concept resting on the previous one. If you follow that progression attentively, you build understanding with real architecture. You begin to see not only what is true, but why, and how each idea connects to the next. That structure is what enables you to solve problems you have never seen before.
By contrast, passively watching a video often creates only the illusion of understanding. The instructor makes everything look smooth and obvious. You follow along and think, “Yes, that makes sense.” But when you try to work the problem yourself, you can’t reproduce the steps. What you experienced felt like understanding, but wasn’t. Cognitive scientists call this the fluency illusion: information that is easy to consume feels easy to master—but it isn’t.
AI-generated answers introduce a similar problem, often in a more extreme form. They arrive instantly, clear and authoritative, with no resistance. But friction is not a flaw in learning—it is the mechanism. The moments when a paragraph doesn’t make sense, when you have to reread a sentence multiple times, when you pause to reconcile one idea with another—that is where learning actually happens. When you remove that friction by outsourcing your thinking, you bypass the very process that builds understanding.
At its core, this is about persistence.
Real reading demands it. You cannot skim a derivation and expect to understand it. You cannot half-read a definition and apply it correctly. Reading for understanding is slow, sometimes frustrating work. You will encounter sentences that stop you. Good. Stop. Think. Ask yourself: does this follow from what came before? If not, go back. That back-and-forth, that willingness to sit with difficulty, is not a sign of weakness. It is what learning looks like from the inside.
Quick answers have their place. Not every question requires an extended struggle with a primary source. But for foundational material—the concepts, techniques, and reasoning that everything else depends on—there is no substitute for careful reading.
After a semester of teaching with my own textbook, my main recommendation is simple: read the book. Start there before you look elsewhere. It is written for you, for this course, and for exactly the kinds of problems you are trying to solve. But this goes beyond my book. Learning to read technical material carefully—any textbook, paper, or documentation—is an essential skill. The challenge is not that the content is unnecessarily difficult; it is doing the work of engaging with it: reading closely, working through the ideas, truly understanding them, and then applying them to new problems. That ability is one of the most durable and transferable skills you can develop. It would be a shame to graduate without it.
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