Science class was always difficult for me.
Throughout my schooling I struggled to earn a decent grade in science. As an adult looking back I realized that most of my education consisted of being taught facts that I attempted to memorize and then retrieve. My memory is poorer than my intelligence would suggest. I’m not a dumb guy, but I have a dumb memory. Not a great combination – smart and forgetful. Thank God the internet came to be in my lifetime. I no longer have to remember much of anything. I have immediate access to facts and am not penalized on my inability to recall items from my swiss cheese brain.
Once in seventh grade I stayed up until 11pm to memorize every fact for a science test. I landed a 97%, the highest grade in the class. After a short-lived exuberance, a mild depression washed over me. I realized that there was no way I would have the energy to do that amount of work for future exams. It was way too much time to devote to a silly test. In the next exam a month later, I barely passed. The teacher pulled me into a private meeting because I guess it’s not common for a student to fall from grace that quickly. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I only studied thirty minutes because I wasn’t going to miss the back-to-back Wings episodes on USA during prime time. The other reason I wasn’t going to kill myself for each test was that the teacher had announced who earned the highest grade. When I had scored the near-perfect it wasn’t like my peers threw a ticker tape parade in my honor. Nobody applauded and, if anything, I sensed hostility from the class. And, if there’s one thing I know about school is that the acceptance of your peers is pretty goddamn important. Over time I learned how to earn Bs without sacrificing my exposure to pop culture. Since I took honors classes, each B turned into an A on the report card. Don’t ask me to explain why that happened, but thank God it did.
This month at InThePowderRoom I wrote a review for a microscope for girls. Don’t ask me to summarize the content because, as explained earlier, I have no memory of it. But I do remember thinking it came out darned good. You should go read it right now.
first photo credit: Science Class at UIS via (license)
second photo credit: Hold My Purse Productions LLC