I was a TA in grading and drainage when I was in school and tutored someone just last year. Almost all the stress and problems came back to the same thing. That is slope = rise/run or vertical/horizontal (s=v/h). More specifically, it is understanding what you know and what you are trying to calculate for. A huge percentage of people get themselves confused with this. It is one of the first things you learn in the class and is very simple. Most other grading and drainage issues don’t seem to be any more difficult than any other subject.
My pinion is that the best thing that you can do to keep up to speed in your class is to get very comfortable in exercising that formula in each of its forms (s=v/h, v=s/h, h=vs). The little voice in your head should always be asking you “where am I and where am I going?”. If you answer both of those with a number that you know, it tells you which formula to use.The biggest problem is that people get confused on which formula to use because they get confused as to what they are solving for. Most of that is because people mistake that knowing the the spot elevation is the same thing as knowing the change in elevation and don’t know what to solve for. If you get that down early, you’ll have no problem. If you don’t, the class will snowball on you.
An algebra and geometry would be more targeted for most of the problems people have. Reading more complex books adds to the overwhelm and overload in my opinion if the above situation is the problem. Again, my observation is that it almost always is the problem.
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