Learning to Learn

Card of the Day:	Reversed Page of Swords
Interpretation:	This most likely represents my inner self, and not a young female. The Page of Swords is a student, just like I am. However, when reversed, she can be a student in name only. She neglects her studies, procrastinates, and generally fails at getting things done. I can see that in my world, and I do not approve. I can fix it.

I am a student. I currently attend UW-Madison, studying Computer Science and Mathematics. I graduated from a small high school (my class was 62 people), and I have a few words for my school district.

There are three sides to any school: Academics, Arts, and Extracurriculars (this includes Sports). My school has at least 2 of these down pat, especially for how small it is. Let me go through these, in an arbitrary order.

Arts: My school is fantastic for this, which, if I understand correctly, seems to be a rarity these days, especially for small public schools. We have an art department with all sorts of stuff in it. I never actually spent a lot of time there, but I know many people who did. We have a yearly musical. We have a concert choir, a show choir, and a band (which is a pep band and jazz band on occasion, too). At least for the choir, we were considered one of the better ones in our district. And if you consider other things as "arts", we have a workshop, too. We also have a "Family and Consumer Education" section. I know one person who would display cakes at our Fine Arts Festivals.

Extracurriculars: Oh dear God, yes. If arts seem extracurricular to you, we've already checked this box, but there's more. First of all, sports are certainly extracurricular. At the very least, we had a good football team. When a generally unknown school can make the state finals, you know they have a pretty good team. I'm not sure about the rest of our sports, but at the very least we had a decent track and field team, and we host at least one large conference a year.

In addition to sports, we have an Academic Decathlon team (we went to state my junior year!), and when I had graduated, they had just started a bio-fuel project. I claim that magic happens at my high school. Convinced? I'm not.

Academics: This is where my school suffers. It's not that our teachers don't want to teach. As a small school, it is easy to form good relationships with our teachers. I believe that our teachers have a problem motivating the students to learn. Not only that, but since our school is so small, most classes have a mix of smart and not-so-smart students. This can be mitigated, but what often happens is that the teacher teaches to somewhere in the middle, so not-so-smart students are below the material and lose interest because they can't understand, and the brighter students are above the material and lose interest because they are bored to tears. I had maybe one class where the discussions we had were intelligent and insightful. It was the best class I had my entire time in high school (not counting choir, since that's not academic).

On top of that, my high school did nothing to prepare me for college. I am not used to lectures. I am not used to midterms and finals. I am not used to STUDYING (did I mention that my high school was too damn easy?). Trying to learn all of this material in the smaller amount of time that lectures give is difficult, at best. Of course, if you fall behind, even one lecture, you're probably screwed. In high school, you can (I've had friends do this) turn a project in 2 months late and get full credit. At least, you could in my high school. I had maybe 2 teachers who could actually prepare me for college (the only reason I wasn't Valedictorian of my class). I basically got to college, and at the age of 18, I learned how to study. Or at least, I pretended I did. Studying properly is hard, and if you don't know how to by college, you're screwed. Honestly.

When it comes down to it, I am an intelligent young man who is doing well so far by the sole virtue of my memory and learning capabilities. My high school did nothing to prepare me for college (which of course, doesn't really prepare you for the "real" world, but that's another post topic). It had a lot of effect in shaping me into the person I am (a lot of things I do now are indirectly the choir director's fault), but when college becomes sink or swim, I tend to sink.

Yesterday's Card:	King of Coins
Reflection:	Well, I didn't accomplish that much yesterday, but I did finalize plans for the weekend. Considering what my priorities are currently, I'd say that's pretty successful. At the same time, doing "card a day" is less a prediction and more a reading of your energy. Since energy can change, the future can as well.

A Time for Introspection

Card of the Day:	King of Coins
Interpretation:	The implication here is success. Perhaps it is time to start a new project. Hmmm... I do believe I have another writing project I've been thinking about. I believe I might begin writing it today.

Perhaps I'll spend my first few posts getting to know myself better. As if I didn't already know, right? Well, that's the thing. Being yourself is a lot like speaking your native tongue. There are rules that you don't think about, but you follow them. There are certain words (or patterns) that are more common, but you just don't think about it. I go through the motions of being me without necessarily knowing the why.

I like the why.

I'm a rational being. Everything happens for a reason, even the really crappy stuff. Mind you, I'm not saying that the reasons have to be GOOD, they just have to exist. I believe in cause and effect. I like to observe the effect and think "what caused this?" In this case, I like to analyze my past, and find how it caused the person I am today.

As you can probably see, I am posting a "card of the day" with my posts. I have recently obtained a tarot deck (The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, if you care), and am learning through the "card a day" method. I am using this as a tool to reflect on myself; who I am, and who I want to be. Essentially, this blog is an extension of that quest.

Tarot is interesting, especially to someone like me. It's supposed to be a tool for divination and introspection. Yet there's no evidence that its predictions actually mean anything. But for introspection, anything that makes you think can be used for that. Tarot is as good as anything else for that.

As I mentioned above, I claim I'm rational. Then why do I seem to believe in something that has no grounds in rational fact? A desire for something more than what this world appears to be. It's as simple as that. Why do people cling to religions that don't necessarily have any factual grounds for their belief systems other than stories written in their holy works? For the same reason. We want to believe that there is something more than this meager existence we live. We want our lives to mean something. This is why we turn elsewhere than this world for hope and comfort.

I do not know whether or not a deck of cards holds any power to perceive the future. I do not know if all of the things people believe are reality or merely stories. What I do believe is that there's more to this world than even science can explain.

My evidence? Luck.

Luck can't be explained. There's a certain thing called the "butterfly effect" that can hide many causes of "lucky" occurrences, but there are some things you just can't explain. Those times you're playing a card game, and you need that one specific card to come up, and it does. For some people, this seems to happen consistently through no effort of their own. Probability can explain this somewhat, but when people start avoiding even the standard deviations, you start to wonder. That, and serendipity is crazy.

And so, in my search for causality in my life, I will be using the tarot as my tool for reflection. Whether or not I choose to talk about myself in my post, I will have that box at the top. It will probably get more organized and purposeful as I go.

Yesterday's Card:	The Hanged Man (XII)
Reflection:	Oh yes. I started this blog yesterday. It will be my tool for reflection, represented by the Hanged Man himself.

Beginnings

Card:	The Hanged Man (XII)
Int:	A time for introspection. Perhaps I need to step back for a moment and choose my direction carefully, rather than walking blindly forward.

I'm not a writer.

I'm not saying I can't write. I'm not saying I don't know my grammatical rules or how to create a coherent and well-supported point. I'm not saying that my depictions are tell, not show.

I'm saying I don't write.

I'd like that to change.

I don't want to be a published writer. I don't want to publish fiction in hardcover or paperback. I don't want to discover some theory or explore some philosophical point that no one has ever thought of before. I don't want to make money off of my writing.

But I want to write, and I want people to know who I am.

I love to create. I love to depict otherworldly vistas, the taste of dust in your mouth, and even the ideas racing through my mind. But most of all, I love adaptation. I love crossovers; mashing 2 worlds or mechanics together to get something completely new. Or even something the same, but with a slight enhancement.

This is who I am.

Perhaps I will discover something to write about. Perhaps I will simply write what I feel. Perhaps I will mix it up. I'm eclectic; I can do that. I can write philosophy. I can write about my favorite video games. I can post a poem or two.

So join me, won't you? We'll see where this story takes me, through all the twists and turns of life.