I should probably mention that I was a huge underachiever in school, which should be shocking to absolutely nobody. The reason? I simply did not care about the things I didn't need to know and most of what was taught in high school, I had already learned in my previous school. That being said, the way I studied and did work was vastly different and the results were vastly different.
Homework in high school always felt like a silly concept. If elementary school is designed to teach us how to learn and middle school is designed for us to improve upon those skills, shouldn't we already know how to do this by high school? Why would doing fifty math problems make us better at that skill than say, five? I always felt high school was more busy work, but being that I worked after school, sometimes until midnight, the idea of coming home to two hours of homework seemed detrimental at best, so I rarely did it. I remember in one class I had an 89 average but failed to do all twenty four homework assignments and ended with a 65. My argument, when discussing my grade was that the grade wasn't indicative of how I grasped the knowledge. I also pointed out that I had one of the highest test averages in the class and being I generally only showed up two or three times a week, this should account for something. Apparently, real world production isn't important in high school and my grade stuck. In college, where busy work was few and far between, I didn't face these problems, so my achievement was much greater.
So let's get down to studying. I've always hated multiple choice tests, because I feel if the answer is in front of you and you are one of those people who excels at rote memory, you'll test better than someone who might know 85% of the material, but understand it. In high school, while studying, I was sitting in the comfort of my own home, drinking some iced tea, chowing on a sandwich and listening to music. In HS, I would usually review the material and then read it over and over. This unfortunately did absolutely nothing to enhance my score and I soon realized that reading the material once and taking a nap was more productive than driving myself crazy. I was a decent test taker, but had the horrible habit of rushing through it, as if the teacher was going to award me for speed. I usually made multiple careless mistakes and my grades suffered due to it. I would guess that approximately 20-25% of the questions I got wrong on tests were due to my rushing or ignoring some rule that I skipped over. While I had nobody to blame but myself, I always felt that my knowledge was in the 90% range, while I tested near 80%. This was proven by most of my written assignments. Aside from one teacher who had an axe to grind, I can't remember ever getting lower than a B+ on a writing assignment or lower than a 90 on tests that required written, descriptive answers. All in all, high school was a fail for me, basically out of boredom and disinterest I mean how many times can you read Midsummer Night's Dream and Catcher in the Rye and still maintain interest
College was a different story. In college, their is some academic freedom and for the most part, professors want you to differentiate yourself from the pack. Ironically, the one area where multiple choice should not be an option, it was the norm. Those were my education class, which were a joke. How can you justify giving an adult four choices to pick an answer, when their responsibility is the nurturing of a child's mind? What if they guessed and got lucky half the time? Do you want them teaching? Most of the work I had to do was writing and this pleased me to no end. It was my strong suit and it also let me do something I couldn't get away with in high school. Do absolutely nothing before a test. Aside from those classes where I knew I'd have multiple choice tests, I didn't study a damn thing in college. I went to class and listened to the lectures. I took notes that would make a stenographer laugh. I had hour long lectures where I wrote three items down on a page, but through osmosis I believed I could be successful and if it weren't for mandatory science classes I would have been fine. Science has always been my Achilles heal and in college it basically ended me. I hate to use the word retarded, but I am scientifically retarded, despite my fascination with it. As long as I don't have to remember any of it, I'm fine. In my college years, I received one paper ever that wasn't an A and I believe I wrote a blog about it and my anger a year later, when my idea, was used to basically invent, what is now known as Peapod. As for written tests, those in essay form, I can't remember ever getting lower than a B+. To me, this was proof of knowledge and the fact I had decent grades to back it up, was all the proof I personally needed.
So what does this all mean? This wasn't meant to be some kind of self efficacy campaign, but one person's realization that there is a bottom line in all of this. High school for all it's aura and allure, is really about survival. It's about pretending to be something your not (or maybe you are) and trying to get through the obstacle course of bullshit and busy work. There is not one person who can say with a straight face that high school molded them. At least I hope not. How could we possibly put emphasis on a time in our lives when all we can think about is the opposite sex and hanging out with our friends. College is much more of a molding device, because it lets us know what our strengths and weaknesses will be in terms of production and time management. I had friends in college who had the same classes as I and would complain about the 15 hours they spent studying over a weekend, while I was bragging about a forty eight hour drinking binge. We ended up with the same grades and they hated me. Many of them are in jobs that require lots of work and attention to detail to achieve, whereas I found jobs that allowed me to complete tasks expected in eight hours of time withing minutes. I think that is why working with kids, especially coaching, is important to me. It allows me to slow down, because I realize they don't yet have the capability of grasping everything and excelling immediately. They need the structure and the time to hone their skills. That being said, over the years, I've had many parents come up to me and thank me for little tips on spelling, grammar and math. One kid's teacher came up and said "I have no idea what you told him, but he's now doing multiplication better than anyone in the class and all he says is that you taught him a trick."
There is no one way to learn and some people need to study for hours. For some the 4.0 GPA is a goal that means the world to them. I was always under the impression that you will be judged by what people see out of you, not what your past achievements were and so therefor a piece of paper with a number was never a goal. I know people who graduated with great honors who can't tell you one coherent thing about their major, but can get an A on a test. I always felt the opposite was important. In grade school I studied two hours a day, in HS an hour maybe and in college, other than papers, I rarely ever opened a book. In every successive level I scored higher and higher, because the stress was lessened. I'm not the norm and I realize this, but I think it's important that we as adults, realize that the kids we're in charge of don't necessarily learn the same way we did and that's a hard pill to swallow, but an essential one, to nurture your child or your students education. It's something that needs to be realized, because to do it wrong, might make that child turn their back on education and then nobody wins.
Homework in high school always felt like a silly concept. If elementary school is designed to teach us how to learn and middle school is designed for us to improve upon those skills, shouldn't we already know how to do this by high school? Why would doing fifty math problems make us better at that skill than say, five? I always felt high school was more busy work, but being that I worked after school, sometimes until midnight, the idea of coming home to two hours of homework seemed detrimental at best, so I rarely did it. I remember in one class I had an 89 average but failed to do all twenty four homework assignments and ended with a 65. My argument, when discussing my grade was that the grade wasn't indicative of how I grasped the knowledge. I also pointed out that I had one of the highest test averages in the class and being I generally only showed up two or three times a week, this should account for something. Apparently, real world production isn't important in high school and my grade stuck. In college, where busy work was few and far between, I didn't face these problems, so my achievement was much greater.
So let's get down to studying. I've always hated multiple choice tests, because I feel if the answer is in front of you and you are one of those people who excels at rote memory, you'll test better than someone who might know 85% of the material, but understand it. In high school, while studying, I was sitting in the comfort of my own home, drinking some iced tea, chowing on a sandwich and listening to music. In HS, I would usually review the material and then read it over and over. This unfortunately did absolutely nothing to enhance my score and I soon realized that reading the material once and taking a nap was more productive than driving myself crazy. I was a decent test taker, but had the horrible habit of rushing through it, as if the teacher was going to award me for speed. I usually made multiple careless mistakes and my grades suffered due to it. I would guess that approximately 20-25% of the questions I got wrong on tests were due to my rushing or ignoring some rule that I skipped over. While I had nobody to blame but myself, I always felt that my knowledge was in the 90% range, while I tested near 80%. This was proven by most of my written assignments. Aside from one teacher who had an axe to grind, I can't remember ever getting lower than a B+ on a writing assignment or lower than a 90 on tests that required written, descriptive answers. All in all, high school was a fail for me, basically out of boredom and disinterest I mean how many times can you read Midsummer Night's Dream and Catcher in the Rye and still maintain interest
College was a different story. In college, their is some academic freedom and for the most part, professors want you to differentiate yourself from the pack. Ironically, the one area where multiple choice should not be an option, it was the norm. Those were my education class, which were a joke. How can you justify giving an adult four choices to pick an answer, when their responsibility is the nurturing of a child's mind? What if they guessed and got lucky half the time? Do you want them teaching? Most of the work I had to do was writing and this pleased me to no end. It was my strong suit and it also let me do something I couldn't get away with in high school. Do absolutely nothing before a test. Aside from those classes where I knew I'd have multiple choice tests, I didn't study a damn thing in college. I went to class and listened to the lectures. I took notes that would make a stenographer laugh. I had hour long lectures where I wrote three items down on a page, but through osmosis I believed I could be successful and if it weren't for mandatory science classes I would have been fine. Science has always been my Achilles heal and in college it basically ended me. I hate to use the word retarded, but I am scientifically retarded, despite my fascination with it. As long as I don't have to remember any of it, I'm fine. In my college years, I received one paper ever that wasn't an A and I believe I wrote a blog about it and my anger a year later, when my idea, was used to basically invent, what is now known as Peapod. As for written tests, those in essay form, I can't remember ever getting lower than a B+. To me, this was proof of knowledge and the fact I had decent grades to back it up, was all the proof I personally needed.
So what does this all mean? This wasn't meant to be some kind of self efficacy campaign, but one person's realization that there is a bottom line in all of this. High school for all it's aura and allure, is really about survival. It's about pretending to be something your not (or maybe you are) and trying to get through the obstacle course of bullshit and busy work. There is not one person who can say with a straight face that high school molded them. At least I hope not. How could we possibly put emphasis on a time in our lives when all we can think about is the opposite sex and hanging out with our friends. College is much more of a molding device, because it lets us know what our strengths and weaknesses will be in terms of production and time management. I had friends in college who had the same classes as I and would complain about the 15 hours they spent studying over a weekend, while I was bragging about a forty eight hour drinking binge. We ended up with the same grades and they hated me. Many of them are in jobs that require lots of work and attention to detail to achieve, whereas I found jobs that allowed me to complete tasks expected in eight hours of time withing minutes. I think that is why working with kids, especially coaching, is important to me. It allows me to slow down, because I realize they don't yet have the capability of grasping everything and excelling immediately. They need the structure and the time to hone their skills. That being said, over the years, I've had many parents come up to me and thank me for little tips on spelling, grammar and math. One kid's teacher came up and said "I have no idea what you told him, but he's now doing multiplication better than anyone in the class and all he says is that you taught him a trick."
There is no one way to learn and some people need to study for hours. For some the 4.0 GPA is a goal that means the world to them. I was always under the impression that you will be judged by what people see out of you, not what your past achievements were and so therefor a piece of paper with a number was never a goal. I know people who graduated with great honors who can't tell you one coherent thing about their major, but can get an A on a test. I always felt the opposite was important. In grade school I studied two hours a day, in HS an hour maybe and in college, other than papers, I rarely ever opened a book. In every successive level I scored higher and higher, because the stress was lessened. I'm not the norm and I realize this, but I think it's important that we as adults, realize that the kids we're in charge of don't necessarily learn the same way we did and that's a hard pill to swallow, but an essential one, to nurture your child or your students education. It's something that needs to be realized, because to do it wrong, might make that child turn their back on education and then nobody wins.
Comments
Post a Comment