Best Subjects in School

[BigMattFromTexas]

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

[74/171FAN]

Mine are definitely math and history.  English by far is my worst subject eventually to where I finally downgraded from Honors to regular.

[agentsteel53]

I always mathful sciencing type.  Englishes non-strongness was.

[jdb1234]

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.

[Scott5114]

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.

[national highway 1]

I'm good at Math & Visual Arts (8th Grade at Carlingford HS, Sydney, Australia)

[Ian]

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  ?

[national highway 1]

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...

[xcellntbuy]

Overwhelmingly strong in history, political science (graduate degree), Spanish and French.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Reading, history/Geography were good to me. Math & Science were ok. English/grammer and Health were my least favorite.

[agentsteel53]

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? 

[corco]

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.

[J N Winkler]

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.

[J N Winkler]

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?

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.

[Bryant5493]

I was pretty good in all subjects in school, with an emphasis on English/Language Arts and art (Drawing/Painting).


Be well,

Bryant

[BigMattFromTexas]

If athletics counts then I guess starting in football and basketball would be pretty good...
BigMatt

[yanksfan6129]

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.

[WillWeaverRVA]

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.

[joseph1723]

Mine are history, biology, physics, computer science, and english although I hated writing essays. Math and I don't get along that well....

[Marc]

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).

[J N Winkler]

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.

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.

[Chris]

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.

[codyg1985]

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.

[Marc]

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.

[english si]

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.

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.