Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Why didn't I pay attention?

I'm hard at work planning this year's Summer Program for work.  A few days ago, I met with some incredible math teachers to get their feedback on the curriculum. These guys were incredible - they just get math in a way I"m not sure that I ever could.

As we were talking about factoring (FOIL, anyone?) and the angles of triangles, I started to feel sad that I have about zero memories from high school math. I'm not sure I could even tutor someone in Algebra. I guess it would come back to me at some point, but why didn't I pay more attention??


This happens to me even now in my grad school classes. A teacher will mention something, and I think, "I know I learned that. What the heck is that? I KNOW we learned that!"

Sigh. I'm pretty sure that if I re-took the test I aced two weeks ago tonight, I would totally bomb it. This is not good. Must. Learn. More!!!

Anyone else feel this way? Think about how brilliant we would be if we had actually paid attention to everything we've been taught and did more than short-term memorized the information for a test!!

3 comments:

  1. I am in the same boat!
    Seriously, I think that my generation was raised to pass each test and not really to retain anything. We cram cram cram, test, and then flush it all to make room for the next cram session. It's frustrating!
    Biz

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  2. I remember "First, Outer, Inner, Last but hardly remember what it is used for...matrices are similar. I remember teaching a friend at lunch because she had been absent, but Lord knows I don't remember what I "taught" her. I'm sure you/we paid attention but as we go thru life there become far more important things to remember! Like paying bills, haha

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