mysterismileimport

I'm giving myself 15 minutes to write about what has been on my mind today before I start on what I actually need to do. I doubt any of my flisters really want to read all these thoughts, so I'm putting them under a cut. That way if you get bored and want to read it, you can.

I am a naturally curious person who can find almost anything interesting if it is presented right or if I can relate it to something in a way that I find interesting/meaningful/important. Like most young kids, I enjoy learning. (I think the fact that most children really like to learn is adaptive, but that's only partially related and not the point.) I have spent free time looking things up and essentially learning. People with whom I talk regularly can attest to the fact that I know all kinds of things that I never learned in school and didn't hear from anyone directly. Seeking out information is part of who I am. Yes, some things naturally interest me more than others, but that doesn't mean I can't find other things interesting as well.

Despite this, I don't like school. I do enjoy and, this semester in particular, even love some classes (PCE 110 and PSY 114), but they are more the exception than the rule. Part of this is because of emotional/mental issues that make it more stressful than it would be otherwise, I am trying to work on them.

Before they came up, I didn't dislike school. I can confidently say that by fourth or fifth grade I was often bored in class. A class/program called PACE that I tested into in fifth grade proved that it wasn't generally the material the was the problem, but rather the way it was presented and the fact that I could grasp it faster than the teacher could account for and not risk other students not being able to keep up. The importance of format is probably pretty obvious to anyone who has ever learned or tried to learn something, and has come up continuously.

Middle school was when I started to actively not like school. Part of that was the surfacing of the issues I mentioned before, but part of it was the fact that the fun in learning started to rapidly disappear from school. Once again, there were exceptional classes, but for the most part it felt like we were learning for the sake of grades and their affect on the abstract, unknown future. It became about how we would be evaluated and the measuring of what we learned. I learned in order to do well, not in order to learn.

My rant/thought is unfinished, but my time is up. Hopefully using that time doesn't mean I won't be able to get required stuff done.