What’s the Rush?

I have never seen students in such a rush to do math.  Before they have even finished writing the number used for a calculation they are punching the calculator to get to the answer as quick as they can.  But they get lost in what the number represents and don’t know where to go next.  Slow Down and be Neat!  Its a concept that never really occurred to me until I’d spent a decent amount of time tutoring chemistry, in particular empirical formula calculations, basic stoichiomestry, limiting reactant, etc. and have been forcing my students to not only obey the golden rule chemistry math (i.e. “every number needs a unit guys!!), but also to neatly right on their equations and conversions.  Boy what a difference it makes.  You can literally see what to do next fall into place when they take the painstaking time to neatly write things out.  In fact, what has been really sinking in has been that if they carefully right out units “all the way” (i.e. not just “mg”, but “mg Na”) the math just kind of falls into place.  There is a natural tendency to rush to do the math.  It is a trend we have been bucking and working to do the math last.  For folks who like to rush (something in the past I have been guilty of myself), it is a hard habit to create but in the end it turns dividends!