A dazzling list of mistakes:

I was a horrible high school student.

First flaw: A tendency to not do assignments. I cared about learning information. Grades meant absolutely nothing to me. So long as I passed the class and learnt everything possible, I was happy. I had one teacher who opened her class with, 'This is an easy class to pass. You could fail all of the tests, and still get a C if you do all of your homework.' My immediate mental reaction was, 'Oh shit. I'm fucked.' And I was. Basically, I'm a slacker. I'll do work if it's actually necessary for the understanding of the material. But busywork? No. Sorry. It's like bullshitting in an essay. I'm almost physically incapable of the practice. It causes me pain.

Second flaw: Terrible attendance. I never went to school. I was called to the attention of truancy officers more than once. I'm a bad girl, oh yeah. But the fact was I didn't need to be there. I aced tests after not being there for a quarter of the semester. I was the kid who everyone wanted to cheat off of, who everyone asked for help on concepts and vocabulary. And this while almost never going to class. Why go if that's the case? It's not as though I was missing anything socially by staying home. The school only became diverse enough for me to find people marginally like me my senior year, when emo started becoming popular, and by that point I was so maladjusted and used to being alone that I wasn't even willing to try anymore.

Third flaw: Complete disregard for mathematics. Okay. I lie. Geometry I enjoyed because I liked doing proofs. Immensely. And that was about a quarter of the year. Sophomore math, Algebra II, I also liked quite a lot and did well in. The teacher didn't assign busywork, and he explained why things happened instead of just saying, 'memorise this formula.' But my junior and senior years (the one with the teacher mentioned above who graded mostly based on homework completion)? Awful. I did horribly, and ceased to even care about learning the principles. The teacher simply couldn't teach. She was of the memorise-the-formula-and-do-100-problems school of math teaching. No logic, no thought, just memorisation and blind following of numerical rules. And it's so. I. I can't learn that way. I realise some people can, but it's not how my brain works. I like doing proofs, as stated above. I think word problems are fun. I can't just plug in numbers and calculate. Where's the pleasure in that? It even strips away most of the sheer elegance of math. And the elegance itself is something I've only grown to appreciate in the past year, so even that couldn't help me while I was taking her classes. This is what I most regret about high school. Giving up on learning the math I could have. It's caused me quite a bit of frustration since I've left school. I like reading scientific articles from time to time, and you really need math of a level I never managed to comprehend to understand a lot of those. And. It's just a sad, frustrating thing. I should've applied myself more. I just didn't see the value of the subject at the time.

Fourth flaw: I never talked. This could possibly be construed as a good thing, and I did tend to talk during class discussions (any time we went into a Socratic circle or had any sort of debating forum I went yay!), but it inhibited my participation more than anything else. I regret this one as well, though not so much as the math bit.

So there you go. I was a silent, absent student who got horrible grades and didn't even much care to learn mathematics after a certain point. Wretched.

I write this because it's put a feeling of dread in my stomach. I am madly in love with a certain school, and I am terrified that I won't be able to get in, largely because this high school record is so horrible.

One of four essays written for the admissions process is to talk about your previous education. I want to say, 'Previous education? I have no previous education!'

revoless.
8:34 p.m.
June 14, 2004.
comments? 0.

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