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Originally Posted by LikeAWillow
Not to be all Stevie Nicks in the 85 interview currently posted in her forum, but I swear to God, I woke up this year, and I was suddenly good at math. I just came back from my calc class, and after missing two days, I still seemed to understand the lesson more clearly than most of the other students did. Before a few months ago, that NEVER would have happened. I'm going to break down the reasoning behind this for you all, though I'm sure no one cares.
High school was fairly valueless for me. I rarely went when I was enrolled, and in the middle of senior year, I graduated early. I knew I had been or would be accepted to most of the colleges I had applied to, and working and earning money seemed a much better use of my time than sitting mindlessly in a classroom. I felt like I had played the game long enough. The only thing I really regretted was that I felt that I never understood math. I could memorize what formulas we were taught and memorize what problems to apply them to, but I never knew *why* I was applying them, and I didn't quite see the use in being graded on my memory.....so I just didn't try. At all. I didn't do my homework, I didn't study for the tests, and I only managed high grades because even barely attending, if you hear a formula again and again, it's eventually going to stick.
So. I got to Wellesley. I had a vague notion of what algebra III was, an even vaguer notion of what pre-calc was, and feeling ignorant while floating around with people who had taken math in the 10th grade that I've never even dreamed of started to really piss me off. I decided to take calculus just for the exposure, though I was sure I would flounder and fail. In the span of one week, I became more than comfortable with concepts of pre-calculus that I felt I had no hope of ever really grasping before because, for the first time, I was taught the why of it, not just the how. I can work with a "why." Learning a "why" makes sense to me. I might actually bother to do it. Now that we're on to actual calculus, I'm even more intrigued. There are graphs, there are theories behind the graphs, they physically make sense and offer explanations.
The moral of the story is that I'm currently having a love affair with mathematics, JTIS..
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This is actually VERY interesting to me personally; for many reasons. Only one of them is that I'm really interested in the field of Education and I think it shows much - for one thing, to me it shows exactly how are colleges are succeeding (or at least leaning somewhere in that general direction) and our public schools are failing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LikeAWillow
Oh, except downside now? I feel like I've garnered what I needed to from college, that it's the governing principles, the big ideas, the "why"s, behind any idea that are far more important than the actual idea itself. I'm kind of over college.
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Well, don't forget, knowing about the gears which make the engine go, is an entirely different thing than understanding the gears themselves.
One other thing I'd like to point out - I think this is a general "rule of thumb" across ALL majors in college: After you graduate high school, you can take a vocabulary test of college-level vocabulary words, and do well on it. After your Sophomore year or so, you're starting to use them, even when hanging out with your friends. After you graduate college, you're talking like a college-educated person. And I think that's a
good thing. Sorry, but "Like, I was watching Jay Leno last night and he like was so FUNNY!" doesn't exactly cut it at the water cooler.
Communicating effectively and being able to make a persuasive argument (in my opinion) really are important for success - regardless of what jobs or careers one ends up having over the course of a long life. Granted that can be learned in places other than college - but it really is true (i.m.o.) that the students learn just as much - or more - from each other than from classes.
It really is a "learning environment" - even if a somewhat LOUD one! lol!
Just some ideas.
