Brilliant: Learn Math & Coding

I’m like 90% sure I have ADHD, and I got this app to make sure I stay focused and do my learning for the day. I also got Duolingo. As we all know, Duolingo is very aggressive. If you miss a lesson, he will kill your family. With brilliant it’s a lot more forgiving. It just braids me with emails and will send notifications to make sure I do the practice. That’s good. (well not the email thing that’s actually really annoying. Please stop that) the problem for me with brilliant is it doesn’t really game it up enough. Duolingo has challenges and goals as characters, some sense of charm. And to some extent a story. While brilliant is just kind of there it does the bare minimum to make sure you do at least the bare minimum every day. But doesn’t really make you try to do much more than that you can rise up through the lower ranks by just doing the streak rechargers rather than doing a full practice and if somebody who struggles to focus and stay on task. Let alone do more than the bare minimum, especially if I’m not already engaged on some kind of emotional level. It loses me. And Brilliant is way more expensive than something like Duolingo, which can even be used for free. While after a week you have to pay for Brilliant. So I sadly can’t give it anymore than three stars. There are a lot of changes that I’d like to see and I pray to God that somebody who is working on this app, see what I have to say and does something. I know that will never happen. But a Man can dream.

The basics are very, very good: the explanations, UI, questions, graphics, etc. But for the cost of the subscription, I expect more. For example, it lacks the ability to easily review past information. Yes you can take notes, and I do, but that negates the concept of learning on the go, whenever you have a moment to do so. Learning a little at a time, it is easy to forget some of what you’ve already done. Yes, that information is contained inside of the lessons and you can go back and look at that lesson individually. But, the courses need to have an ongoing summary review of information you’ve already covered, like a student would in a notebook. It would also be helpful to have a quiz of randomly selected information you’ve already covered, like Duolingo provides. Secondly, and most frustrating, is that in the last year that I’ve subscribed, courses have disappeared. Specifically “Chemical reactions” I started it and needed to pause to focus on other things and now when I’ve gone back, it’s been removed. I mention this one specifically because I still have my notes, but I recall there being other similar college level courses. A lot seems to have been removed. What initially attracted me to Brilliant was being able to review many of my undergraduate college courses like chemistry, math, and physics. Brilliant say content is continually being added but nothing abut it being removed.

I’d like to preface this by saying I never review apps. Ever. On a whim, I downloaded this app to see what the fuss was all about. I’ve only spent maybe 20 minutes on it so far and I’m totally blown away. This is some quality educational content in a fantastic format unlike anything I’ve come across before. The material I went through just now was familiar to me from two classes I took in college: a psychology course on memory & cognition and an English course that focused on persuasive writing, mainly logic. Bachelor degree level content here! I’m truly so impressed and thrilled that this exists. I was so ready to jump on the premium train until I saw the payment options. The special price for the subscription to sign up right away is only if you pay for it annually, meaning a pretty big chunk of change all at once for something you haven’t gotten in the habit of even using yet. The other option is to pay monthly, except the monthly price is three times what the special would be if paid monthly. I know this might not be a problem for most people, but I’m an enthusiastic student who got sidelined by a sudden illness and subsequent disability that has prevented me from being able to go to school and finish my degree. I’ve been looking for something like this for the past two years to satisfy my hunger to learn without completely exhausting my body. Being on disability, I can’t front $100 for my subscription, but I can find a way to scrape up $8/month. For those of us who live from week to week, please make this more accessible!!