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.