I kind-of got this from the geography thread, but as a kid what were your strong school subjects? Mine are history, english, and science. I (unfortunately) barely failed my Math TAKS. So yalls?
BigMatt
Mine are definitely math and history. English by far is my worst subject eventually to where I finally downgraded from Honors to regular.
I always mathful sciencing type. Englishes non-strongness was.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 08, 2010, 07:58:28 PM
I always mathful sciencing type. Englishes non-strongness was.
Math, Science, and History for me. I absolutely HATE English. I do not like to read boring books and have problems writing.
English was probably my best subject. It helped that I enjoy writing. I was decent at history and science. Math, however, can go die in a fire.
I'm good at Math & Visual Arts (8th Grade at Carlingford HS, Sydney, Australia)
Social Studies/Geography/History were the strong ones for me. Math, science, and english are horrible for me. Foreign language is so-so but I always never liked to learn it. Oh, and does P.E. count as a subject ;-)?
Quote from: PennDOTFan on May 08, 2010, 09:44:36 PM
Social Studies/Geography/History were the strong ones for me. Math, science, and english are horrible for me. Foreign language is so-so but I always never liked to learn it. Oh, and does P.E. count as a subject ;-)?
I guess it does...
Overwhelmingly strong in history, political science (graduate degree), Spanish and French.
Reading, history/Geography were good to me. Math & Science were ok. English/grammer and Health were my least favorite.
Quote from: osu-lsu on May 09, 2010, 12:13:07 AM
Health
health class was a joke when I took it. At least it was reasonably liberal (i.e. we learned that condoms exist and they should be used) but at the same time, did I really need to know about the 34 different female birth control options?
When I was in high school I was best with Algebra/Calculus and Government and routinely got Cs in anything writing related.
In college I've become not nearly as good with the math and science (except GIS, which I weirdly do really well in) but do well in writing courses- I spent my first two and a half years at a liberal arts college which nuked my ability to regurgitate on exams, so now I do very well in any course that involves writing lots of papers and poorly in classes that involve taking multiple choice tests (except standardized tests, weirdly). My GPA in 400 level college courses is somewhere around 4.0, while it's probably 2.8 in 100 level classes.
I don't think I got a B in anything in high school with the exception of journalism. However, I took AP exams in close to ten subjects and did not come close to getting a 4 or 5 in all of them. My weakest subjects were chemistry (AP exam score was 2 or 3--I am not sure if things have changed since, but at the time the AP Chemistry curriculum involved a lot of lab work and you had no hope of getting a 5 unless you made AP Chemistry your entire life) and computer programming (AP exam score was also either 2 or 3). I went into the AP Government exam expecting an easy 5 but got a 4 instead, partly because the format of the exam had been changed radically the previous year and that put my time budgeting off.
Unlike most Ivy League schools, which will only give you sophomore standing on entry once you get a minimum number of "good" AP exam results, my undergraduate university allowed me to "stack" credits on basic-level undergraduate courses for which AP credits were accepted in lieu. In the end I think I got about 50 credits this way (or perhaps closer to 60 if you include the statistics requirement I was able to dump by studying a statistics textbook and aceing a standardized DOD aptitude test in this particular field). I was not by any means the most successful at this approach--I entered with a girl from my high school who also got at least 50 credits in lieu, and the record-holder (whom the deans spoke of with admiration) was a girl who had entered several years before I did and had gotten almost 100 credits. At that time an easy BA required something like 150 credits, so she was in effect two-thirds of the way toward the minimum requirement.
Entering with over 50 hours allowed me to avoid most of the distribution requirements and is the main reason I was able to avoid taking any history courses as an undergraduate. However, I did have to satisfy a politics & government requirement and, rather than take a lower-division course which would have implied a crowded lecture hall, I opted for an upper-division course in African politics. It was a small class and the instructor had cut his teeth working in Mobutu's private office in Zaire, so it was very interesting.
It is ironic, but these days I find I do quite a lot of work in one of my weakest AP fields--computer programming. In order to automate collection of the construction plans which I subsequently break down into signing plan sheets, I have had to write a fair few batch files. I have MnDOT, Wyoming DOT, Caltrans, and Utah DOT largely automated using Windows ports of wget for file retrieval and sed for string extraction. I also have batch files for autogenerating listings of projects I already have (1,827 just for TxDOT, for example) so I can streamline dealing with duplicates.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on May 09, 2010, 12:19:11 AMhealth class was a joke when I took it. At least it was reasonably liberal (i.e. we learned that condoms exist and they should be used) but at the same time, did I really need to know about the 34 different female birth control options?
I think the focus on sex education has been very damaging, but IMO the damage done has relatively little to do with the merits or disadvantages of any of the particular approaches to teaching children or teenagers about sex that have been taken. Ultimately, sex is not that important to people's day-to-day lives. If you have unprotected sex and wind up with an unplanned pregnancy, or even genital herpes/chlamydia/AIDS, then yes sex is important, but I'd say that a substantial proportion--maybe even the majority--of people whose lives might be helped by a public-school health education class are in low-risk categories with regard to sexual behavior (either not having sex at all or having it only within a committed relationship).
These are the people who lose out when the knowledge that is necessary for a good life is squeezed out by our obsession with sexual matters.
Here is my personal laundry list of things I didn't learn in health education. Some of them (particularly the ones dealing with sinus headaches and cold management strategies) I wish I had learned much sooner than I eventually did:
* If you have a lot of sinus headaches, that is a sign you might benefit from regular nasal irrigation (I perform
jala neti on a nightly basis).
* Avoid bread made with mechanical air entrainment (basically, most store-bought pre-sliced bread)--it will help keep your bowels clear.
* Nothing puts the stink on shit more strongly than pork. Pork loin and pork chops are not too bad from this point of view, but cheap cuts of pork will produce really quite a strong smell.
* Laxatives out of bottles or bubble packs are bad. The best defense against constipation and associated ills (including hemorrhoids) is a regular, fiber-rich diet consisting of the recommended four to five servings of fruit or vegetables a day, including a fleshy fruit (apples are best) eaten at a consistent time of day. A tablespoon of olive oil will help grease difficult-to-pass stools.
* When you are a child, you can afford a diet which is somewhat richer in fats and lower in fiber than you can as an adult. In other words, once you reach your twenties, you have to start eating more sensibly.
* You should shower or take a bath at least once a day, whether you think you need it or not. It aids comfort if you have your one bowel movement of the day immediately before you take your shower or bath.
* Eat food for taste, not fuel (unless you are in a hurry, which should be an exceptional event rather than a routine occurrence).
* Avoid cheese whenever it is used as a fattening agent. Basically, if you can't really taste the cheese, you should not be eating it and it should not have been used in whatever you are eating. From this point of view, pecorino, Stilton, and extra mature cheddar are all right; Cheez-Whiz is not. (I have my doubts about Gouda and similar bland Low Countries cheeses.)
* Your palate will change as you age, and foods you didn't like as a child will probably appeal to you as an adult. You therefore shouldn't write off Brussels sprouts, courgettes, broccoli, etc. if you didn't like them as a child--you may very well start liking them when you are in your twenties.
* There is a reason bankers are more willing to lend money to single-malt connoisseurs than to beer drinkers of identical net worth.
* Avoid saturated fats and trans fats, and gravitate toward polyunsaturated fats. In a typical rich-nation Western diet you will have no difficulty getting enough omega-3 oils but you will need to work to get omega-6 oils, which are important to cognitive functioning.
* Don't be penny-wise when food shopping if it means being pound-foolish. In a typical Western society a single calorie from cooking oil will cost 1/10,000 as much as a single calorie from a vegetable, but you need the nutrients from the vegetable more than you need the oil.
* In winter, expect your fingertips to be cold. This is not automatically a sign of Reynaud's syndrome. An electric kettle with automatic shutoff, and a hot water bottle, are your friends. In Britain these are ubiquitous; in the US they can be found, but require some effort (Amazon.com does have reasonably priced electric kettles with auto shutoff).
* The common cold will probably still be with us when we start exploring other planets. The market for cold remedies and palliatives in the US alone runs to the multiple billions of dollars, and quite frankly none of them work (except eucalyptus oil, which has well-proven cough suppression properties). Throat lozenges dull the pain but leave your mouth feeling sweet and sticky; decongestants are nothing but meth-lab ingredients and will leave you feeling like you are coming down from an amphetamine high. Just irrigate your nose with salt water (the relief it offers from a sore throat is instant and complete but unfortunately short-lived), eight or more times a day if necessary, and taper off as the symptoms fade. With a bad winter cold you can expect about three days of congestion followed by four or five days of histamine overload; frequent nasal irrigation will manage the symptoms while keeping the cold from moving into your sinuses or onto your chest.
* Wear your outer clothing multiple days if you wish, but always change into fresh socks and underwear at least once a day.
* Once you pass puberty, never assume you can dispense with deodorant. Even if you don't use antiperspirant (I personally don't, because the alum dries out my skin), you should use an unguent-type deodorant. On the other hand, don't wear perfume in sufficient strength that it can be smelled when you are two rooms away. Perfume is for pleasant mystification, not for telling the world how scared to death you are of others knowing what you
really smell like.
* Don't hesitate to use lotion for dry skin. A teaspoon of olive oil every now and then can also help relieve skin dryness.
* Strong coffee taken once or twice, early in the day, is better for your sleep than a steady drip-feed of weak coffee through the day. If you need something to enhance your alertness in the afternoon, drink tea instead.
* Whenever possible, budget at least 8 hours for sleep each night.
* If you need to make a large excursion from your usual sleeping schedule, e.g. when flying to a completely different time zone, or waking up early to travel somewhere distant, try to allow a minimum of 8 hours for sleeping, and take a melatonin tablet before you go to sleep. Even if you do not sleep the full eight hours (very hard to sleep at all on a transatlantic redeye, for example, because of jet vibration/little kids kicking the back of your seat/whatever), the melatonin will help you function without grogginess once you awake. For this purpose, however, use one-shot melatonin rather than the time-release kind (which IMO actually makes grogginess worse and seems to be designed for chronic insomniacs).
* When dealing with jet lag, ignore the people who urge you to stick splinters between your eyelids until it is normal bedtime in the target time zone; this is just a recipe for oversleeping either the next day or the day after. Rather, take a power nap to take the edge off the sleep deficit, and then go to bed at a normal bedtime.
* Eat fruits and vegetables at their times of peak freshness. This is one of the greatest pleasures on God's green earth.
* Coffee made in a moka pot is stronger than coffee made in a cafetière (French press) or percolator from an identical volume of ground beans. It is, however, cleaner because the coffee is steam-brewed and neither requires nor receives filtration. If your eyes feel dry, this is a symptom of excess coffee consumption. Unusual awareness of your own heartbeat regardless of pulse rate (palpitations) immediately after going to bed indicates either too much coffee absolutely, or too much drunk late in the day.
* Garlic is yummy. One-sixth of a bulb is, however, the outer limit for polite company. One-third will result in urine and stools smelling strongly of garlic the next morning. One-half will empty your house of other people. For maximum health benefits, chop with a sharp knife (don't press), and eat the garlic when it is fresh. Sophisticated people will try to tell you that garlic won't smell if you remove the inner stalk from each clove; this is false. Other sophisticated people will tell you to use garlic and parsley in the same dish to avoid the smell; this works (especially if the parsley is fresh), but only for a short time after eating.
* Fresh sweat on a recently washed body does not smell, as a rule. Sweat allowed to dry on the body, however, eventually smells. Apocrine sweat (armpits, groin) starts to smell a whole lot faster than eccrine sweat (other parts of the body). If you do something sweaty (e.g. cycling in warm weather) but have to be presentable to other people and have no time to shower, it pays to shake out clothes and wipe up excess sweat. Change clothes more frequently in hot weather than in cold weather.
* Nothing kills coffee/tea breath faster than a small glass of orange juice. (Fresh-squeezed is the Spanish custom, but juice made from concentrate also works.)
* Drink water frequently.
I was pretty good in all subjects in school, with an emphasis on English/Language Arts and art (Drawing/Painting).
Be well,
Bryant
If athletics counts then I guess starting in football and basketball would be pretty good...
BigMatt
History is by far my best subject, and the one I am most interested in. I guess in general I'm a social sciences person.
This year, I took US History II Honors, Constitutional Law Honors, and American Political Systems Honors. Next year (my senior year), the vast majority of my schedule will be in the social sciences... I will be taking Holocaust and Genocide Honors, Psychology, Sociology, AP Government, and AP Economics. Government and Economics are particularly interesting to me.
History, chemistry, and biology were my strong points in school and college. I did well in English but I hated every step of the way.
Mine are history, biology, physics, computer science, and english although I hated writing essays. Math and I don't get along that well....
Quote from: BigMatt on May 08, 2010, 07:52:17 PM
I kind-of got this from the geography thread, but as a kid what were your strong school subjects? Mine are history, english, and science. I (unfortunately) barely failed my Math TAKS. So y'alls?
Ahh, I remember when I took the TAKS. I even remember the days before it was TAKS and was called TAAS. Enjoy high school while you can. I hate the college system in this country. It's a load of bull. How colleges are required to fail a certain percentage of students. How professors make gobs and gobs of money simply based on tenure, not on performance or how students perform in the class. And in the meantime while professors get huge raises for failing students, tuition keeps going up. It also amazes me how much power a professor has. They can change grading scales in mid-semester, use bell curves, not cover certain material that should be covered, etc. It's very rare to have a somewhat down-to-earth, logical professor. Most are liberal, have long shaggy hair, and are really out there. And many will do everything in their power to get you to think like them, especially when it comes to political issues, or being progressive. I absolutely cannot wait to graduate and enter a world of normalcy.
So, that ends my rant on the college system. I'd say that my best subject in high school would been English and/or writing. Though I am definitely not a fan of reading, I really don't mind to write at all. I'm really disappointed that it took me as long to develop political views as it did because I would love to be able to retake history again. I would have been a lot more interested had I had real political views at the time I took history (mainly when it comes to the pre-1877 stuff).
Quote from: Marc on May 11, 2010, 02:00:04 AMI hate the college system in this country. It's a load of bull. How colleges are required to fail a certain percentage of students. How professors make gobs and gobs of money simply based on tenure, not on performance or how students perform in the class. And in the meantime while professors get huge raises for failing students, tuition keeps going up. It also amazes me how much power a professor has. They can change grading scales in mid-semester, use bell curves, not cover certain material that should be covered, etc. It's very rare to have a somewhat down-to-earth, logical professor. Most are liberal, have long shaggy hair, and are really out there. And many will do everything in their power to get you to think like them, especially when it comes to political issues, or being progressive. I absolutely cannot wait to graduate and enter a world of normalcy.
What kind of university are you going to? It certainly doesn't sound like my undergraduate
alma mater (Kansas State), where the professors were generally clean-cut, a bit on the conservative side (certainly more so in some disciplines than me), there was no requirement to fail a certain percentage of students, grading rarely if ever assumed a Gaussian distribution, etc. I had trouble with very few professors and in each case it was a question of personality clash, not divergent political opinions.
I was good in geography, economy, civics, history, English, French and German (except for grammar in French and German).
I absolutely flunked Dutch literature, physics, chemistry, computer science and math.
I also briefly took a course of Latin. I was quite good at it, but only had it for a couple of months as an extra.
The funny thing is, I've read hundreds, if not more books at age 10 - 16. I read a 350 page book in 2 -3 days. Mostly thrillers like Tom Clancy, Ludlum etc (basically books that were intended for people far beyond my age at the time). After it was obligatory to read real Dutch literature, I lost all appetite to read books again. I believe I've read maybe 2 or 3 books ever since. A real shame.
Math was always my favorite and best subject. Loved it until I started Linear Algebra. When you leave the realm of numbers altogether and talk about vector spaces with n dimensions, you have completely lost me. I loved calculus and diff equations, even.
I used to despise history with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but after I had a great teacher, I got to love history. Now it is also among my favorite subjects. Same with geography, even though sometimes I have trouble remembering everything.
Quote from: J N Winkler on May 11, 2010, 04:48:30 AM
What kind of university are you going to?
Right now, I'm at the University of Houston, but my freshman year, I attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock. I wanted to change my major after freshman year, but Tech didn't have what I wanted, so I had to transfer back home to Houston. I was in the art department as Texas Tech, so that probably explains the "out there" professors I had, but I've had (and seen) many here too. I wasn't really talking about one college in particular, but rather the whole system. I just don't agree with how professors can make so much money simply based on tenure with a university and yet tuition rates continue to rise.
Quote from: Marc on May 11, 2010, 02:00:04 AMI hate the college system in this country. It's a load of bull. How colleges are required to fail a certain percentage of students. How professors make gobs and gobs of money simply based on tenure, not on performance or how students perform in the class.
Most of the lecturers (a lot of professors passed teaching onto post-docs and did some module oversight and one or two lectures of the 20 or so and that attitude trickled down) in the department at the uni I went to were hopeless at teaching. The department is incredibly research based, and a top place for that (you're are getting this from me, via long distance fibre-optic cables, invented in that department and I'm using the world wide web - the inventor of which is a professor in that department (though wasn't when I started)). However, they were really resting on those laurels then - there wasn't much care about students, they weren't the source of income, the research was, and it was far more interesting for most of these guys. It's improved a bit now, as they dropped from their perpetual first place to go for Electronic Engineering to seventh when my year group graduated.
I enjoyed maths at school (not at uni, where we did what the maths students were doing as a 6th of our semester and a lot of it was irrelevant to any of the subjects taking the module, and just taught, seemingly, to cram as much maths in as possible. Taught by maths academics, not engineers - there's a huge difference in thinking there), mostly as I was good at it.
I enjoyed most of the subjects I took, with some exceptions - history and geography have always interested me as subjects, but at school I didn't enjoy them. Sciences I liked (Biology the least) and I loved doing Electronics at GCSE and A-level, due to it being easy, the teachers were good, and most of the time not there. Business Studies was interesting, but I was too busy mucking about to learn much and too swamped down trying to pass English to try hard, so I got a B. French was fun, until we had an overly-patriotic French teacher (who made the class sing a song about how great the French football team was - we weren't amused!) who helped me learn why the French and English don't get along as nations. Art and Design Technology were fun a lot of the time, but I sucked at them (less so DT, but I couldn't jump through the writing up hoops, and when I design stuff, it is so often subject to change, which they didn't like - I made the best device of the class once, and got a D overall, because my write up was short, sweet and jumped through none of the hoops). ICT was another jump through hoops and all the marks being in the write up, not the product - oh the number of training days, bank holidays and weekends that I was dragged into school to work on my coursework by my IT teacher (also had the problem of over-ambition) - I got an A, which was considered poor by the school's standards (150 people got A*s, 20-odd got As and 2 got Bs. The 10 to 15 people who weren't looking like getting an A weren't entered or were withdrawn from it).
English/English Lit was a struggle and I didn't enjoy it (I enjoyed reading the books and doing some analysis on it, but there was too much putting thoughts in the author's head and I can't right essays). There was also lots of expert opinions we had to agree with (I wrote an essay and got a D purely as I disagreed with the experts, with no counter argument to my argument given by the teacher, even when I asked. The question was "some experts think Macbeth is a study on human nature. Discuss." and I gave some points for that, and some against and came out with the conclusion that it might have been, but it was primarily entertainment and sucking up to the new king) and the exam was incredibly politically biased - lots of stuff about Western Culture being Imperialistic and we had to compare a book review on a book doubting that Global Warming (as it was then, about 15 years ago) was man made or the end of the world and a scientific paper saying the opposite - I didn't point out the genre clash, as I had been instructed not to in practise exams, and got a pass not a fail because of failing to express what is good English Lit practise. I had to say how the book review didn't have citations, it was assertion, it made logical leaps and so on, and was therefore really awful, when the scientific paper was excellent.
German was fun, though I disliked reading and speaking, especially when 'off piste', mostly as I couldn't answer the question in English. In fact, in my Oral exam, I was asked where I was going on holiday and said "I don't know" (in German) and had the question repeated in English, and I said that I understood, I just didn't know the answer and so I had to struggle to make something up. Still I got an A, and would have loved to carry on, but I could only do four subjects and it also wasn't looking like it was going to happen (German would have been a fifth subject, which was easily something that I had time for, given my four subjects were Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Electronics, and supplemented each other).
Interestingly, my personality type meant that the path I chose at 16 was completely against my personality. While science, problem solving and maths were easy and enjoyable to me up until 18 (17 for maths, as we moved quicker and did 1.5 A-levels with the time allocated for one and I reached my barrier there), I should have done an arts subject at uni, according to my personality type.
I thought my professors were excellent! Then again I went to a technical university and studied electrical engineering, so there was little room for political expression - the professors taught to their research, certainly, but the only problem with that was really finding enough professors to teach the intro classes. (Not much research going on in introductory mechanics or electricity and magnetism!)
I think they did a competent job of that - finding enough professors who clearly loved to teach and assigning them to intro calculus and whatnot, and then letting the more research-oriented ones get away with teaching the esoteric grad classes, which were occasionally little more than fronts for their research.
I did especially well in math, French (for the five years I took it) and English; respectable in the rest of the subjects. I was the one who destroyed grade curves in Calculus.
Quote from: Chris on May 11, 2010, 09:13:25 AM
I was good in geography, economy, civics, history, English, French and German (except for grammar in French and German).
I absolutely flunked Dutch literature, physics, chemistry, computer science and math.
The funny thing is, I've read hundreds, if not more books at age 10 - 16. I read a 350 page book in 2 -3 days. Mostly thrillers like Tom Clancy, Ludlum etc (basically books that were intended for people far beyond my age at the time). After it was obligatory to read real Dutch literature, I lost all appetite to read books again. I believe I've read maybe 2 or 3 books ever since. A real shame.
I was quite good in math (algebra, geometry and computer science), geography, physics and history.
My worst grades were for French, English, German and chemistry.
I also lost appetite to reading literature after the obligatory booklists (Dutch, English).
Books about (rail)roads I still read although... ;)
I was OK in anything that didn't have to do with math, though I did decent in geometry. Algebra kicked my ass.
*disclaimer* resurrecting yet another very old thread :-D
Social Studies no doubt. With the combination with Geography which of course I'm great at, and History which isn't too much of a brain-strainer for me, SS is definitely my best subject :D
Math is decent. Most if the time I'm pretty good and then fairly often I'll flattout bomb a test :-D
Science and English, ehh...not so good. Being a very religious person (as some of you have definitely found out recently), I tend to be very "eye-rolling" in Science. And to prevent conflict I won't go any farther than to say I don't do too good in there...
Then in English I don't give a rat's tail what a helping verb is. I respect the enforcement of grammar, and I choose to use it as you can see, but I see no reason we are forced to learn what the parts of a sentence are. Also, if I'm not reading about roads or something very interesting, I honestly cannot concentrate on reading a book. It bores me out of my mind and it is so time consuming to read books all the time in school, but I just have to cope with it..
Quote from: adventurernumber1 on August 28, 2014, 06:34:15 PM
Then in English I don't give a rat's tail what a helping verb is. I respect the enforcement of grammar, and I choose to use it as you can see, but I see no reason we are forced to learn what the parts of a sentence are. Also, if I'm not reading about roads or something very interesting, I honestly cannot concentrate on reading a book. It bores me out of my mind and it is so time consuming to read books all the time in school, but I just have to cope with it..
part of the problem is, you're learning at age 14 what you probably learned at age 6, then again at age 7, then age 8, age 9, etc...
but, dude, pay attention in science. I've read the bible and can speak intelligently on it; it behooves you to have some basic idea of how God put the dinosaur bones into the ground 60 years ago when he created the heavens and the earth.
I tend to get good scores in all my classes (My lowest AP score was a 4 on the Human Geography exam, and I got a 1540/1600 on the SAT), however, I enjoy my Math, History, Government, Economics, and Programming classes much more than my English and Lab Science classes. A terrible teacher I had in sophmore year English completely soured me to any sort of Writing or Literature class.
This upcoming year (my senior year) I am taking:
AP Psychology
AP Government
AP English Literature and Composition
AP Environmental Science
Computer Science II
Multivariable Calculus
Linear Algebra
All but the Psychology and English classes are dual-enrolled with a local community college.
nice! I took multivar calculus just as a self-study course (since I had exhausted my school's math options by junior year) and apparently learned it well enough to test out of the college requirement.
(I also tried to test out of differential equations and linear algebra just by winging it ... I scored about 17% on the first and maybe 60% on the second exam, where an 80 would have been a test-out.)
My best subjects were the sciences (especially physics, in which I went on to get two degrees), math, and Spanish. My worst was driver's ed, although I now have a spotless driving record. My second worst was P.E.
Best (from top to bottom):
* English
* Science (As an atheist... this should be expected, however, I did not take physics or chemistry outright thanks to my shitty math grades)
* Physical Ed (Yes, I always managed to get an A despite NOT running on run days)
* Genocide / Holocaust (11th grade)
* Video & Film
Worst:
* Math
* Anything related to art
* Anything related to math
* Math again
English, History, and Earth Sciences mainly Meteorology (which is my current major)
Worst: Math
All of 'em, pretty much. Had a 3.8 GPA in high school (fourth in the class), a 3.9 in undergraduate (summa cum laude) and 3.9 in graduate school.
My worst subject in high school was whatever science class I had as a junior (I think it was chemistry). In college, literature classes bored me to tears and it showed in my grades. Also photojournalism, because my darkroom skills in printing pictures weren't great.
I found that in high school so much depends on circumstance: the luck of the draw can determine the teacher you get, whose particular teaching style might make or break your understanding and/or interest in that subject.
Don't write off whole areas because you might have been taught them in ways that didn't click with you. I realized this in college and felt a lot better about the subjects I struggled with in high school, whether or not I remedied this in college (some yes, some no).
Best:
* Computer science - stuff I actually find interesting, also my major :)
* Science - my favorites were 2nd year biology and grade 11 chemistry
* Math - especially Calculus & Vectors
Worst:
* English - maybe because of the teachers I had in grades 10 and 12, and the fact that I dislike reading fiction and
* Phys. Ed. - I'm just into sports, or any kind of physical activity whatsoever. :no:
Quote from: adventurernumber1 on August 28, 2014, 06:34:15 PM
Then in English I don't give a rat's tail what a helping verb is. I respect the enforcement of grammar, and I choose to use it as you can see, but I see no reason we are forced to learn what the parts of a sentence are.
While first-language speakers naturally acquire the language through their environment, second-language speakers have to be taught it from a linguistic perspective, i.e. phonetics, parts of speech, conjugation, syntactic rules, etc. These things don't get taught here (because the assumption is that you already know English), resulting in things like switching pronouns in subject and object positions (e.g.
he and I vs.
me and him), or misconjugating participles (e.g.
should have went instead of
should have gone), or not being able to tell the difference between
e.g. and
i.e.
Quote from: Pete from Boston on August 28, 2014, 11:56:09 PMI found that in high school so much depends on circumstance: the luck of the draw can determine the teacher you get, whose particular teaching style might make or break your understanding and/or interest in that subject.
Don't write off whole areas because you might have been taught them in ways that didn't click with you. I realized this in college and felt a lot better about the subjects I struggled with in high school, whether or not I remedied this in college (some yes, some no).
Another thing to think about: the classes you do the worst in at high school may very well be the ones that are the most useful in later life. I think I took about seven AP courses in my high-school career (Calculus BC, US Government, US History, Physics A, Chemistry, Psychology, Computer Science) and took the AP exams for all of them. One of my worst scores (a 3) was on the AP Computer Science exam, largely because the course was not scoped to match the test and did not "teach to the test" by exposing students to the types of questions asked on the exam. In recent years, however, I have found this brief exposure to programming to be very useful in writing downloader scripts that essentially surveil various state DOTs and turnpike agencies and pull in signing plans that may be of interest. "There's an app for everything" is not true for this particular use case, and for others where off-the-shelf code does exist that does part of what I need (e.g. tracking gas mileage for a 20-year-old car that has a broken odometer), being able to write code to integrate it into a completely automated process is helpful.
In high school I think I ranked 11th in a graduating class of about 350. When I was admitted to KSU, I had about forty hours of test-out credit as a result of AP exams taken in high school, but the record-holder in this regard (who later went to Oxford on a Marshall scholarship and then returned to do a DVM degree) entered with sixty-plus credit-hours.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 29, 2014, 11:19:32 AM
Quote from: Pete from Boston on August 28, 2014, 11:56:09 PMI found that in high school so much depends on circumstance: the luck of the draw can determine the teacher you get, whose particular teaching style might make or break your understanding and/or interest in that subject.
Don't write off whole areas because you might have been taught them in ways that didn't click with you. I realized this in college and felt a lot better about the subjects I struggled with in high school, whether or not I remedied this in college (some yes, some no).
Another thing to think about: the classes you do the worst in at high school may very well be the ones that are the most useful in later life. I think I took about seven AP courses in my high-school career (Calculus BC, US Government, US History, Physics A, Chemistry, Psychology, Computer Science) and took the AP exams for all of them. One of my worst scores (a 3) was on the AP Computer Science exam, largely because the course was not scoped to match the test and did not "teach to the test" by exposing students to the types of questions asked on the exam. In recent years, however, I have found this brief exposure to programming to be very useful in writing downloader scripts that essentially surveil various state DOTs and turnpike agencies and pull in signing plans that may be of interest. "There's an app for everything" is not true for this particular use case, and for others where off-the-shelf code does exist that does part of what I need (e.g. tracking gas mileage for a 20-year-old car that has a broken odometer), being able to write code to integrate it into a completely automated process is helpful.
In high school I think I ranked 11th in a graduating class of about 350. When I was admitted to KSU, I had about forty hours of test-out credit as a result of AP exams taken in high school, but the record-holder in this regard (who later went to Oxford on a Marshall scholarship and then returned to do a DVM degree) entered with sixty-plus credit-hours.
The AP Computer Science exam sucks. It's more about being able to do math in your head rather than actual programming knowledge. Thus, your score on it more or less corresponds to your SAT/ACT Math score rather than actual knowledge of the subject. Thus, most colleges I've looked at don't accept it unless you get a 5 on it.
I always did very well in English, History, and most of the Sciences - except high school Biology - which I couldn' t quite grasp (plus I broke one of the school's microscopes, which put me in a bad light with the instructor). Was pretty good in basic math, but Freshman Algebra in high school really tripped me up.
My best subject was not in school...it was driver's ed. Got a 99 on the driving test.
I also did well in science, reading, and spelling.
I was way above average in spelling in first grade...the other students couldn't spell "detour" no matter how hard they tried.
History was only slightly interesting to me back then...but now I find it very interesting.
I always hated English, where you have to read fictional stories and remember minute details. I always did poorly at this because I don't give a f*** about fiction.
Math is my worst subject...and still gives me problems. I just could never grasp algebra. I did good up to algebra.
I think part of the problem is the way it's taught.
Classes go way too fast.
They give you too many problems on homework, more quantity, worse quality.
The teachers are always female, and I tend to learn better from male teachers.
They give you problems with similar, but flipped numbers close together. This causes math dyslexia mistakes. I recently had a Cisco test with IP Addresses of 172.127......, and I kept dislexing them.
They don't tell you the reasoning for what you are doing, they just tell you how to do it. If I can get the reasoning, I can grasp it very easy.
I am currently in college for Cisco networking, almost done, and doing well.
In terms of grades:
-Worst: Phys. Ed
-Best: everything else
In terms of skill/interest:
-Best: liberal arts/social sciences
-Worst: still PE (I have no interest in sports whatsoever (though I might someday get into gymnastics... it was the only unit I liked until junior/senior year when things like archery were options) and have never been in shape in my life, and the gender factor was an issue with me too), foreign language, math (depending on how it's taught and what type)
Quote from: vdeane on August 29, 2014, 02:03:10 PMIn terms of grades:
-Worst: Phys. Ed
In terms of skill/interest:
-Worst: still PE (I have no interest in sports whatsoever (though I might someday get into gymnastics... it was the only unit I liked until junior/senior year when things like archery were options) and have never been in shape in my life, and the gender factor was an issue with me too) . . .
I got an A in PE, but that was because grading was based largely on participation, and I always showed up and suited up. The instructors were steeped in the philosophy of inclusivity, so the class itself was as far as it is possible to get from the ugly movie stereotype of a PE class from hell where the fat and slow are routinely humiliated. In retrospect, however, I think there was a bit too much focus on cardio and not enough on strength-building exercises, and changing clothes in the locker room was a trial. In high school students of either sex pretty much have body self-image issues unless they are jocks or cheerleaders, and I was no exception.
However, PE is another example of a high-school course one doesn't necessarily shine in where the subject matter becomes important in later life. When I reached my late twenties, I prevailed on a friend to teach me weight-lifting techniques, and I have been going to the gym three times a week for the past several years. It has made a huge difference not just in strength and muscle definition, but also in mental focus.
Grading was based on participation through middle school, but skill became more important in high school. Some units even had written exams. My grades did improve in my junior year when non-sports options opened up at least part of the year. I've always been very out of shape... I think I was the only person to take over 10 minutes to run the mile in one year.
@Brian556 - Hadn't thought about Drivers Ed as a subject, probably because it was no longer offered at my high school when I took it. As a result, I got my permit the day I turned 16, but didn't start Drivers Ed (which I took at a private school) until ten months later. Because of this, I actually had to take the learner's permit test a second time, when the original permit expired while I was taking the road lessons. However, even in the 1970s, the Massachusetts written test (you take the written test to get the permit - the license test is a road test only) was regarded as something of a joke and almost anyone who had enough intelligence to deposit a fare on an MBTA bus could get a passing grade. Of course, I got 100% both times I took the test.
As I've stated in other threads, my two favorite memories of Drivers Ed both occurred during classroom sessions.
The first incident was when we were given sample Registry of Motor Vehicles (Massachusetts' fancy name for what other states call a DMV) permit tests that were from 1955. One of the questions on the test was "What does a single white line mean?" I was not only the only person in the class (of 30) who correctly answered "Do Not Pass", but was then asked by the instructor (who expressed shock and amazement that ANYONE in the class knew the correct answer) to explain to the class why the answer was correct. I immediately replied "Because yellow dividing lines did not come into common use in Massachusetts until after 1961, when the Federal traffic standards changed. This test is from 1955, before that happened."
The second incident occurred two days before the classroom sessions ended. The instructor gave each of us a set of regional road maps (the AAA "Southeastern States" type maps), a random - but major - destination somewhere in the United States, and an instruction to plot a route from the driving school to that destination. After plotting the route, we were each to describe our route to the class, identify major junctions and cities along the route, and why we chose that route. We were given twenty minutes to complete the assignment - of the 30 students, I was one of only five students that completed the task on time.
Good times indeed.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 29, 2014, 04:15:48 PMI got an A in PE, but that was because grading was based largely on participation, and I always showed up and suited up.
One of the grading periods in which I got an A in PE was devoted to baseball. I located the part of the field where nothing ever happened and chose that as my position. I learned an important lesson, but not what the teachers had intended to teach.
Quote from: vdeane on August 29, 2014, 04:59:49 PMGrading was based on participation through middle school, but skill became more important in high school. Some units even had written exams. My grades did improve in my junior year when non-sports options opened up at least part of the year. I've always been very out of shape... I think I was the only person to take over 10 minutes to run the mile in one year.
You had PE multiple years? In my school district it was a requirement for only one semester.
I am not sure I have ever been able to run a ten-minute mile. When I was in my early twenties, I had a girlfriend who was going through basic training at Fort Jackson, so I downloaded the Army's physical fitness manual (FM 21-20) and tried to see how hard it would be for me to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test. The APFT has three elements (running, situps, and pushups), and at that time the passing standard depended on your age and sex. I think I would have had to run two miles in 18 minutes to pass and I was never anywhere close to that--I started at two miles in 25 minutes and managed to shave that down to about 21 minutes. I was not even overweight to begin with (current BMI is about 22, and back then I think it was 20).
My senior year of high school was a textbook (no pun intended) case of "luck of the draw".
The previous summer, the school hired a teacher who was very experienced in teaching college level math to teach Introduction to Probability and Statistics. The administration realized that they may had made a mistake when, midway through the first quarter (our high school had four quarters instead of two semesters), the teacher submitted about 135 warning notices to the headmaster for mailing to parents - there were only 150 students in my senior class. The warning notices were not sent out, and the teacher didn't return for the next quarter.
For the second quarter, the school brought in a teacher from the opposite end of the spectrum - a former elementary school teacher - to teach the same course. When warning notice time came around, she was much more selective in sending out notices. Using a student's current grade as the initial "yes/no" basis, her additional procedure when sending out the notices was to randomly select one of the four "standard" reasons for issuing the notice. My grade at the time was borderline, so I probably should have gotten a warning notice anyway. The problem was that, on the notice, the teacher decided to check off the box labeled "Does not complete homework assignments." Luckily, I was able to convince my parents that the teacher was wrong, but there were some tense moments when my father first opened the notice.
This teacher did not return after the second quarter. For the third and fourth quarters, they re-assigned a teacher who had been teaching Physics instead. Took over half a year, but my classmates and I finally started learning something and getting decent grades.
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 29, 2014, 08:09:43 PM
You had PE multiple years? In my school district it was a requirement for only one semester.
In New York, you need it throughout high school in order to graduate, though seniors in my high school could opt out of one quarter (except third quarter, which had the mandatory square dancing unit for juniors/seniors) if they were in a sport during that quarter.
My school was interesting and did grades by quarter but class schedules (for half-year long classes like most electives; PE was also broken up this way to provide additional flexibility) by semester.
Quote from: vdeane on August 30, 2014, 11:01:10 AM
Quote from: J N Winkler on August 29, 2014, 08:09:43 PM
You had PE multiple years? In my school district it was a requirement for only one semester.
In New York, you need it throughout high school in order to graduate, though seniors in my high school could opt out of one quarter (except third quarter, which had the mandatory square dancing unit for juniors/seniors) if they were in a sport during that quarter.
My school was interesting and did grades by quarter but class schedules (for half-year long classes like most electives; PE was also broken up this way to provide additional flexibility) by semester.
I can't imagine a one-year PE requirement. Mandatory four years for us, too.
It's hard to read all the reasons people bombed gym class, because it really should have been taught from a "staying active is a critical part of minimum good health" standpoint, rather than from a "learn to be a good second baseman" angle. Of course, kids don't really care about the long term, so they try to trick you into learning to be active by making you play dodgeball. Of course, if dodgeball comes with a stack of social stigmas and whatnot, kids don't learn that physical activity can and should be beneficial rewarding.
Got to get to kids early, because fast food, computer/tv/video screens, and diabetes are unrelenting.
Quote from: Pete from Boston on August 30, 2014, 02:36:47 PMI can't imagine a one-year PE requirement. Mandatory four years for us, too.
It wasn't even a full year here--just one semester. Perhaps Kansas might have an obesity rate similar to that of New York and Massachusetts (right now it is about 29% versus 23%-ish depending on what table you look at) if PE were required in all four years of high school, but personally I am skeptical given all the other factors that correlate to obesity, such as educational attainment. In the latter two states the proportion of the population that has bachelor's and graduate degrees is between 4%-10% higher than in Kansas.
When I was in my last two years of high school and carrying a full load of AP courses, I would have heavily resented having to carve out an hour each day for PE.
QuoteIt's hard to read all the reasons people bombed gym class, because it really should have been taught from a "staying active is a critical part of minimum good health" standpoint, rather than from a "learn to be a good second baseman" angle. Of course, kids don't really care about the long term, so they try to trick you into learning to be active by making you play dodgeball. Of course, if dodgeball comes with a stack of social stigmas and whatnot, kids don't learn that physical activity can and should be beneficial and rewarding.
This is an important message, but I am not sure PE classes that focus heavily on cardio are the best way to communicate it. When I was in PE, the most interesting and memorable class period of 90 was the one we spent partly in the weight room, but we were not allowed to stay long and we were not given detailed instruction on how to use the weights. I wonder if that may have been for liability reasons.
Muscle mass is an important factor in weight regulation. There has been a stream of media articles recently on the general theme of "If you are a woman and you wish to lose weight, eat and exercise like a man," and these pieces often play up a tendency for women to overdo cardio and avoid weights, because weight areas in gyms tend to be male-dominated and bulking up (which, for hormonal reasons, few women can do anyway) is considered unattractive for women. There is a real need for good instruction in resistance training for both sexes, not just for physical fitness but also for safety since bad form and imbalance in a training program can cause all kinds of musculoskeletal problems. I have no personal experience of a PE class that includes this in its curriculum.
Those are all good points, but it's the last time these kids are a captive audience, so it represents an important opportunity to teach them to integrate physical activity into the culture, for lack of a better way to put it, of their lives.
The best things I learned about exercise were not in school, but after school when I would run and bike on my own: that it improves energy, focus, mood, sleep, self-confidence, and overall long-and short-term health.
I think it's great to give kids a foundation of good specific techniques/principles of exercise, but as has been repeated about other subjects here, teaching them why might make it easier to make them want to know how.
But sadly, there's not a government metric for being a well-rounded individual with self esteem and good life skills, so that's not what schools generally aim for.
Quote from: adventurernumber1 on August 28, 2014, 06:34:15 PMScience and English, ehh...not so good. Being a very religious person (as some of you have definitely found out recently), I tend to be very "eye-rolling" in Science. And to prevent conflict I won't go any farther than to say I don't do too good in there...
Depends what they are teaching you. If they, in bio, are merely teaching you that short giraffes die out when the leaves are tall, leaving just tall ones then that's both legit science and something that even 6-day creationists can accept. If they are teaching you that Creationism is wrong and putting in a scientific-sounding creation story in its place then you have every right to object.
Darwen's theory of Natural Selection is science known for thousands of years written formally. The key reason we credit Darwen with it is that (while agnostic) he came up with a Creation Story that made atheism credible (there's another one - Aristotle's eternal universe - hence why the Big Bang got objects ) and Huxley and other anti-religion zealots jumped on it. Huxley, or his acolytes rewrote the history of Science as a battle against the Church, which has been shown to be totally and utterly bunkum, but the sentiment has infected the culture, both religious and irreligious.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on August 28, 2014, 06:41:05 PMbut, dude, pay attention in science. I've read the bible and can speak intelligently on it; it behooves you to have some basic idea of how God put the dinosaur bones into the ground 60 years ago when he created the heavens and the earth.
A bit of a straw man there!
But the sentiment is right - the church founded masses of schools, universities, etc. The anti-intellectual movement in the Church is a recent (last 100 years) thing.
Quote from: Zeffy on August 28, 2014, 08:50:26 PM* Science (As an atheist... this should be expected, however, I did not take physics or chemistry outright thanks to my shitty math grades)
There are other (more logically consistent) ways to get to atheism that aren't sciency-sounding*, but philosophical. Arguably you are more likely to find a religious person in a list of science majors than in a list of English majors at British universities - certainly among professors, English departments have a lot fewer religious people.
*most of the hops, skips and jumps are philosophical, rather than scientific. People like Ken Ham (a creation scientist), will happily admit that the science stops way before you arrive at the story, but due to the complete lack of interest in philosophy of science in scientistic circles, people like Bill Nye don't have a clue where the bounds of science as an academic discipline are and so assume that the co-option of Hegel by Darwen is science...
Anything but math or creative writing.
Quote from: adventurernumber1 on August 28, 2014, 06:34:15 PMScience and English, ehh...not so good. Being a very religious person (as some of you have definitely found out recently), I tend to be very "eye-rolling" in Science. And to prevent conflict I won't go any farther than to say I don't do too good in there...
Science is so much more than evolution! Evolution is covered in, what, one week of biology class per year? There are so many fields of science, and while not the majority, there are religious scientists in said fields.
I'm not really interested in making this a discussion about Christian apologetics (and it's probably not allowed by forum rules), but in brief, there are Christians who do not believe that creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive. Or, they come at it with the approach of "He's God and can create the universe however he wants, and how he does it doesn't affect my belief in the rest of my faith."
Also, there's tremendous value in learning about what others believe. Even if you don't believe in evolution, it's important to learn about it so that you can have an intelligent conversation with family, friends, etc. about it if the opportunity arises.
----
Anyway, best subjects in school. My best subjects have always been English and History. I'm currently also doing well in my urban planning courses. I was decent in science and math but usually had to work harder in these courses for A grades. I enjoyed phys ed more once I had the option in high school and college to pick courses that were not focused on team sports (like wellness walking, dance, and yoga).
Oh, I forgot all about history, which is my third favorite subject, right after Science. I love US History in particular, but mostly any history is good history to me. Renaissance and Middle Ages are two of my more favorable non-US ones in particular.
Quote from: english si on August 31, 2014, 05:14:34 AM
There are other (more logically consistent) ways to get to atheism that aren't sciency-sounding*, but philosophical. Arguably you are more likely to find a religious person in a list of science majors than in a list of English majors at British universities - certainly among professors, English departments have a lot fewer religious people.
I don't want to dwell on this, but for some reason I've had "obligations" to science as an atheist amongst some of my more religious peers. Don't ask me how or why, because I don't know. However, I do love science, and astrology and meteorology are probably my favorite scientific topics, and then biology.
English, science (except chemistry) and geography were my strong suits.
Geometry and the aforementioned chemistry, however, can still die in the nearest 5 alarm conflagration. I was not good at all when it came to geometry, and chemistry kicked my ass.
Quote from: Zeffy on September 01, 2014, 10:18:28 PMHowever, I do love science, and astrology and meteorology are probably my favorite scientific topics, and then biology.
Astrology? I'll presume you meant Astronomy, rather than proving the adage (wrongly, but not too wrongly, ascribed to Chesterton) "When a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything" right and thus merely mock your spelling! ;)