Damn it!

[meghanxx4]

Damn it, in English we had to do like those annoying journal reviews for a book. We had to do atleast 10 journals plus a bunch of other pointless stuff like summary and stuff to go along with the project. Well i'm pretty much done the thing(its like a month late but whatever) and today i was quickly finishing and i just remmeber when i was half way done my last journal, and had finished everything else that i forgot to add quotes!!!!!! Crap. I hate quotes, they make it more boring. What's wrong with summarizing it and then writing your thoughts reflecting off what you just summarized. I don't get it. But oh well... my english teacher is harrassing me to hand it in this week so i will go through the book and pic some random quotes and shove them in random places and then my misery can end. I really hope this teacher retires this year.... if he doesnt then f me because then i ahve the possibility of having him for english 12 next year. But whatever atleast i'll know for next year when we do shakespeare to actually read the book because he takes quotes from the book and asks us who said what and well sparknotes isnt enough... i learned the hard way. My back up plan if my biologist career fails was to be either a english or socials teacher but i just realized if i had to teach english i would also have to teach shakespeare, and Meghan and shakespeare dont go together.

but whatever i know this thread is full of grammar mistakes and junk but too be honest i dont care right now. Its readible.

sorry for my rant and complaining i geuss.

 

[Jez]

I know what you mean!

 

[Auggie's Dad]

when we do shakespeare to actually read the book

That would be advisable.

It's unfortunate that our education system is getting worse and worse at helping students find passion for what they are learning. Forcing people to spend the majority of the day studying things they have no interest in is simply a waste of time - evidenced by the fact that most students just bull**** their way through and use spark notes, or they pay someone else to write their essays, etc.

There are many things we need to learn in life to be successful, and I doubt it will be taken to heart, but if you want to be a successful biologist, while it may not seem like it now subjects such as writing and literature are quite important. Anyhow, there are many things that must be learned, but they will not be learned until the student is motivated to learn.

For all of high school I was on the verge of both dropping out and being kicked out. I didn't take any of it seriously, never did the work, and BARELY squeaked by... okay one year I didn't even squeak by, summer school sucks, that's all I can say to that.

Eventually my dad sent me to college, where I failed most of my classes the first year. I dropped out and joined the military (really pissed off my dad). By the time I came back from the military I figured out what I wanted to do with my life - I had questions and was curious about things... and hey, all those textbooks had some answers. I went back to school and remained on the academic deans list for my last three years of undergrad, got into a great graduate program and I'm working now toward my PhD and I'm loving every moment of it.

Once I found motivation to do it suddenly the work was no longer work.

Anyhow, just felt like sharing some of that as after I read your post my first reactions were critical (along the lines of "students these days"). But a moment of reflection showed I was the worst student at that time - and things have worked out great for me. So don't worry about the crap your teachers are trying to teach you, but find something you care about, something you are curious about, and don't stop asking questions about it and learning about it.

If biology is your thing I'd be curious what aspects or what area of biology interest you - I might be able to recommend some authors who really motivated me to learn.

 

[Jez]

I'm also interested in biology. I've got a few years to decide for sure, but wright now I'm aiming towards law, biology, or psychiatry. Still thinking.

 

[meghanxx4]

The thing is i don't mind english except for the shakespeare part of it i'm fine. It's just this year i got a teacher that is obsessed with that shakespeare so he spent like half the year on it. We had to do like a billion essays and questions and junk on it and i sucked. I'm usually pretty good at writing essays and stuff but if its something i dont even completely understand or care for then obviously im not going to do a good job. So ya i pretty much just passed that part. Currently i am the verge of failing the year which is something i really dont want to do. I have gone to summer school before when i was in grade 8 for english, i was at a different school and the teacher was a tool and sucked majorly and i skipped half the classes. Anyway i switched schools and i have been doing pretty well except this year has just sucked. I just totally failed at life at picking my courses. I think i must have been drunk or something when i wrote down half my classes. I mean, english is one you HAVE to take but a couple other things we had choices like chemistry.... ugh huge mistake i'll be lucky if i pass the year. And Biology was really fun, but now we're doing really boring stuff. Like who the frick cares about plants? and slugs and other gross junk that? I was looking through the book and it had loads of enteresting chapters but my teacher seemed to pic the most boring ones. Do you they get amusement watching students learn about plant sex? I am hoping next year bio 12 will be way better. I think i chose some better classes. I took a couple social study based classes, as i like socials and history stuff as long as i have a good teacher. The teacher i have this year is just like oh my god shoot me now. Although i know the wiith alot of the classes i am taking next year i know which teachers teach what. Theere sint a huge if ay variety in teachers so i know who i am going to get most likely. Which is good. Anyway yea, i want to be a biologist or zoologist, something along those line. Haven't really decided completely what specificly in biology i would like to do or study but ya. I was thinking animals like zoology but i found they make very little unless your a proff or something. so i dont know and then i was thinking genetics but it seems too smart for me. So ya we'll see. I'll probably just take some general biology classes in Univ and then decide later on. Oh and i dont think anyone pays anyone or gets someone else to write their stuff for them because at the beginning of the year you have to write a writing sample thing and also for each term so if the essay or whatever seems really good when usually your ability to write is so so then they tend to suspect something. But its not very accurate i dont think because they always choose really boring lame topics so or atleast me anyway i always do a crappy job.But then again the teacher always chooses topics like that so i always do a crappy job..... but ya theres a girl in my english class who just got told to re write the whole novel project because its too 'advanced' for her.

 

[Jez]

I see what you mean.
Every English teacher I've had with the exception of one were all BORING... Except ONE - that one was/is my favorite teacher I've ever had.

 

[Auggie's Dad]

I didn't think much of plant biology when I was starting out either. My work is in animal behavior and zoology related work; but recently plant biology has become very interesting. I'm of course not changing my field, but I love learning a bit about it now. Plants actually DO far more than many of us think - they just do it slower, and live longer.

If animals slowed down by factors of 10 to 100s they would look pretty boring too.

I just found this interesting site:
Plants In Motion
Check out the movies there - some are better than others I really liked the 'morning glory twining' under 'nastic movements'.

Do you they get amusement watching students learn about plant sex?

Unfortunately they don't realize that such a topic may not be interesting until you have a context to put it in and see how unique it really is. Much of the theory behind animal behavior draws on how animals reproduce - All animals have a vested interest in helping their offspring survive as their offspring are the vehicle of their genes. There are two general strategies: produce a lot of offspring and hope for the best, or produce a few and spend the extra energy taking care of them. This latter form is what we see most often when birds feed their young, or wolfs protect and teach their young to hunt, etc. But there is another aspect for sexually reproducing organisms: each offspring has only HALF of a given parents genes (in most organisms.) Siblings are also thus related by only a factor of one half; someone's cousins are 1/8 related, etc. This factor of relatedness is important for much social behavior - most animals tend to help closely related animals more.

Now why did I bring all that up? Because in animals the battle of the sexes lead to a stalemate: each offspring gets half it's genes from the mother and half from the father. One exception is Hymenoptera (Bees) where many of the offspring get all their DNA just from their mother - and this does have consequences for their behavior. There are MANY such exceptions in the plant world where the genetic compliment of the offspring is not a 50/50 split from the parents. This is why plant reproduction became interesting to me - but of course if you haven't learned about all those other things than plant reproduction is not only boring but confusing as hell. Even though I'm quite interested in it I have a hard time grasping many of the details. So personally I'd agree it is a poor choice of topic for high school biology, but I also suspect that your teacher has good reason to be excited about it.

Jez -

I had a very similar experience with english teachers, except my "good" one wasn't until I was in college. I've always known writing well was important, but I also always dreaded english classes, but this one professors english class was one of my favorite college classes. A good teacher can really make the difference. I hope our education system shapes up and we get more 'good' teachers.

Until then, however, student's need to be partially self-taught. Find some things you want to learn about, something that excites you, then tie everything else to it. It's incredible how much all different fields of study do in fact overlap. I found a passion for animal behavior, and that helped me learn history: the way people understand animal behavior has always influenced and been influenced by the politics of the day - so if I wanted to really understand the study of animal behavior I had to become familiar with history. Once I realized that I started doing really well in history related classes.

I've also given the example (though somewhat vaguely) about how plant reproduction can be tied into my subject of animal behavior.

So if you are ever bored in a class, or with a subject, then the challenge is to figure out how that subject can help you with your area of interest.

Shakespeare may be pushing it, but despite all the challenges in working through it Shakespeare was well aware of human nature. His plays and other writings capture aspects of life that happen in everyone's life, and in the lives of social animals (which is why I can appreciate his work). His work includes commentary on these common themes in human life - often pointing out how foolish our natural reactions often are.

My studies can be summed up with the question: "Why do animals do what they do?" and of course humans are just another animal, so we are included in that, and while Shakespeare does not have much to say on the WHY part of that he does accurately capture precisely what it is that animals often do.


Anyhow, animal behavior is my thing, it's what I tie everything back to to find motivation. Figure out what motivates you, and tie everything back to that and suddenly learning those things will be fun.

The only risk is that you may loose any inkling of a social life and spend all your free time and libraries and laboratories - hey I'll admit it, I'm a geek - but it's pretty cool when the whole world is my laboratory - I can go outside just about anywhere to make observations on my current subject of songbirds.

 

[meghanxx4]

Ya, we did bees and insects too this year... it was ok. Not as bad as plant biology. I liked the beginning of the year better when we did more the evolution of animals and stuff, and how like you can see in the skeletal structures a lot of them are very similar to humans despite what they look like from the outside. Also another thing is the universities around here the animal biology part is mainly based on like sea creatures and stuff. And that i dont really care for either. I don't mind doing like animals that use the ocean but are also land animals too. Like otters or something but honestly i dont care about jelly fish and tiny little critters under rocks. Im not really crazy for whales or fish either, but even that would be better than studying barnacles and things under rocks. This is one of the reasons why i am really thinking if zoology is my thing or not. I mean i know there are hundred of different avenues but around where i live it seems most of the post secondary schools seem to focus on ocean stuff... not even interesting ocean stuff either. I think maybe the reason why they tend to focus on that stuff is maybe because of the surroundings. I mean obviously since im in Canada our beaches or sea shores aren't anything to write home about compared to say Hawaii or California maybe, but they do have a lot of wildlife and stuff. So i could sort of see how they want to use that and take advantage of it. The problem is sea life seems to be the only thing they offer. I mean maybe if you wanted to be a marine biologist or something then sure thats great but personally im not inerested. I'd rather learn about land mammals or even reptiles and birds and the evolution of them etc. I am considering very seriously of a exchange that is offered at the university i plan on going. You get your Associates degree at the university in your area, and then you can get your bachelors in a partner school in Australia. Australia has always interested me and ive always wanted to go so i am definitatly probably going to try and take advantage of it. Its just getting to university and staying occupied and interested in highschool is the problem. I think once im in university it will probably be a lot better but in highschool its just boring. Luckily i have only one more year to go and then university so im hoping next year will be better.

 

[Auggie's Dad]

I think once im in university it will probably be a lot better but in highschool its just boring.

I have yet to meet someone who did well in college who does not say something very similar. And sadly many people who do very well in high school just don't make it at a college/university.

I'd argue it's because high schools tend to focus on wrote memorization and some even seem to discourage independent thinking or critically questioning things. At a university most classes are just the opposite.

 

[Jez]

I think once im in university it will probably be a lot better but in highschool its just boring.

I have yet to meet someone who did well in college who does not say something very similar. And sadly many people who do very well in high school just don't make it at a college/university.

I'd argue it's because high schools tend to focus on wrote memorization and some even seem to discourage independent thinking or critically questioning things. At a university most classes are just the opposite.

That's why I HATE some high schools...
Independant thinking, questioning, all things with YOUR OWN IDEAS, are to me, thee most important part in learning. Your opinion DOES matter. I hate when in a math class or whatever your teacher does something one way that you don't understand. You give her your way.vShe says no do it this way. WHY? Why? WHy!? WHy does it matter HOW you do it as long as you DO IT?
I'll start another post for religion... going to catholic schools I question... you'll see...

For me plant bilogy and everything isn't that bad... I actually enjoy it quite a bit. To me, the boring stuff is Social Studies (Revolutionary, Civil War, WWI...). Vietnam war I like though... for one reason... I relate it to the tropics...
I've only had one English teacher who made the class fun, hopefully not the last...
Math... I have one thing to say... When in life will I need to solve X, Y, Z for
9X x 72^2 /(divided) 13.7 + 13(3) - 35.3^3 = .... ???

 

[meghanxx4]

I dont mind math. I prefer more of the algebra stuff though rather than the geometry and trig junk. I find in the younger grade they are like that where they want you to do it their way. As you get into the higher grades its more like i dont care how you get the answer as long as you show your work and it comes up with the same answer they have or that its right. But ya, that is annoying specially since there are tuns of different ways to solve stuff and although they usually try and teach the easiest way it doesnt always work for everyone. Also they sometimes teach you the long way and want you to learn the long way and then later on they teach you a shortened way. Like long division and synthetic division. In grade 5 or whenever we learned long division i couldnt figure it out for the life of me. synthetic division is soo much easier and faster. I dont mind socials. Sure some parts are boring. Personally i dont like the geography part.... even though im taking geography next year.. i may drop it im kind of thinking i should probably take math 12... but i dont know. lol

 

[TexDot33]

As one who was looking into the education profession, specifically in the field of English Language Arts I have many things that I could add to this conversation, but I am going to limit it to just TWO comments ...

1) I would be a DAMN GOOD ENGLISH TEACHER and I promise that I would never bore anyone while teaching the subject ...

2) There are many comparisons that can be drawn between today's movies/books/entertainment/music that have their roots in the classic novels/authors ... I couldn't imagine this world without the influences of the likes of Chaucer and Shakespeare (Heath Ledger would have been without 2 of his movies if it weren't for these influences) and others ... To understand where we are as a people, we have to understand where we have come from, and a lot of that is in the literature of those times. I suspect that the reason that one might have a hard time with Shakespeare is due to the Early Modern English ... once you get past that, the stories are incredible! Murder, betrayal, true romantic love and most importantly - SEX (I can point out two plays that have orgies in them) ... I think that modern high school teachers do a grave injustice to good ole' "Billy S". But then again, that is more of a reflection of the community that they teach in than the teachers themselves ...

******* ok, I lied, I am going to add a third here ******

3) The ability to write, and write well, is a fleeting skill. As part of my college requirements I had to help incoming freshmen with writing skills that they lacked coming out of high school. Many of them didn't have college level grammar skills that they would require to be able to pass entrance exams, not to mention being able to put together professional looking documents. You guys don't understand, and you won't until you get there, that writing and proper grammar is a make-or-break art for college success and beyond. I really do believe that the reason for this lack of skill is due to the recent explosion of communication that we do in everyday life where "b4" has replaced "before". Kids today want to write as they speak; and, all the time I hear people speaking incorrectly when they talk to one another. I truly believe that there is a direct correlation (which, AD, correct me if I am wrong - DOES NOT PROVE CAUSALITY) between the way that people speak and their lack of writing skills.


**** for the record, you can look back through all of my 2300, and then some, posts and you will see that they are, for the most part, punctuated correctly with impeccable grammar. That is a standard that I hold myself accountable for. I would also suggest to those of you in high school, with aspirations of going to college and beyond, that you start, right now, holding yourself to those expectations too ... it's only going to make your life a HELL OF A LOT EASIER in the long run. *****

 

[Auggie's Dad]

Internet speak is inherently different than other forms of communication - or at least it should be, though the two are affecting one another which is unfortunate.

I don't put much thought into the grammar or spelling of forum posts. I try to be clear in what I am expressing but I tend to use a more vernacular syntax online and often create posts as I would speak, not as I would write. The advantage of internet forums is if something is not clear someone else can ask "what the heck are you saying" compared to most other forms of communication where you have to be sure your reader gets it right the first time.

I am currently working on a paper, which I hope to get published, which in part refutes some previous publications by others. I am reviewing and revising it dozens of times to make sure that every word and every phrase is just right so that there can be no confusion or misunderstanding - and also so that my argument can have it's full effect of convincing others.

But that is not a matter of informal conversation where someone will ask for clarification, it is a matter of career - if I don't convince them the first time my work will not be published.

I'd agree with Tex that it is good to have the habit of writing well. But I myself prefer to 'let my hair down' a bit given that I have to write well for my day job. So yeah, my grammar online sucks - and my spelling is even worse.

 

[meghanxx4]

Ya, i write differently on forums as well. Obviously if im handing in something for school then i take better care and use punctuation and grammar etc. Personally i find shakespeare super boring. I even have like books that translate it and stuff and i find the plots kind of dumb. I can't for the life of me figure out what the hell they're trying to say half the time. It takes me like an hour to do like 20 questions when it usually takes 20 - 30 minutes. If they just did the story and moved it would be fine but no they spend like half the year on it. Specially remembering who said what. First of all i dont care what Macbeth said to Lady Macbeth or what Julius Caesar said to Calpurnia or what Portia said or whatever. I'm going to forget it like 30 seconds after i write the test anyway. I could see maybe answering questions about the plot and maybe doing like one essay. Seriously though they drag it on though. like 5 essays quotes from every scene or act or and questions ... its annoying. I think they should focus more on like writing skills. Essays in university and college are different from highschool level essays and they should focus more on that. Not on dumb elemental books like Lord of The Flies or The Pig Man or To Kill a Mocking Bird and so on. I'm taking History next year because part of the reason is its a really hard class apparently and the teacher teaches you how to do an actual essay not high school junk.

 

[TexDot33]

Also, knowing a little bit about how the memories are recorded and stored in the brain, I am going to say that with the animosity that you have towards Shakespeare you are going to remember a lot more than you think you will.

*lol*