All through middle school, my teachers taught us these stupid ways to take notes, and study for a test. We had to write papers using colored strips with main ideas and supporting details, take Cornell notes, take Cornell notes on how to take number notes, make outlines on sections of the book, highlight the important bits, etc. etc. For somebody who functions better just writing something out without really thinking about it (like I am right now), thse methods were evil, and deserved to go live in Tartarus, along with standardized tests and P.E. class. "Why do we have to use them all the time?" we would complain to the teachers. "They don't use them at the high school, so how will this help us down there?" They always stuck to the same story- they're good to know in case you need them in college, or to study for a test in high school, because it's up to you how you prepare and get good grades. With two teachers right out of college, it was easier to believe that, but none of us really cared that much. We just wanted to stop writing papers by making notecards with one main idea for each one, color-coded for the certain source.
It took me a week after eighth grade ended to realize how right they were.
This summer, I'm studying for the health exit exam at the high school, so that I can test of the class and therefore have room for another elective, like journalism. We got the book and a small study guide, and were told that the test was an AP test, and one of the hardest tests pre-junior year that we would ever take. I heard from somebody who I regard as a genius that it was the most diffult test he had ever taken, and from another that it was a piece of cake. "Come to registration ready to take the semester one exam, and then we'll see who passes and move on to semester two," our AGP coordinator told us. And then we left.
The first thing that came to my mind as I regarded my health book for the first time was to do an outline. I remembered that my sixth and seventh grade science teacher had encouraged us to do outlines all the time, and even showed us this giant book on biology that she had been outlining for years, just for the heck of it. I remembered my eighth grade science teacher leading us through how to create an outline for a study guide, and telling us how she had been asked by her college to duplicate her own study guides as examples. She told us that we only needed a few words to get a point across, and as long as we could understand it, it would be all right. I remembered hours of answering questions at the end of a section in US History and science class, and remembering them just because I had physically written them down. I remembered the nights before math exams, when I would find the sample tests at the back of the book and try to finish them all, as well as the practice problems in every section. I did these things without really thinking about it, and it wasn't the grueling work that came to mind, it was the lessons learned.
It's not like I've been to high school yet or anything, but just outlining a few of the chapters in this health book has brought me to the realization that you really do have to take your own initiative. They taught us these simple skills in elementary school and middle school do that they would be there, ready for us to use, when we needed a source or method in high school or college, and probably methods in high school that are ready for use in college. And college skills that prepare you for the rest of your life. Humans are lifelong learners, and we can't help but absorb things as we go along, and those things will help us for the rest of our personal existance, whether good or bad experiences come with them. I remember things that my violin teacher told me from when I was seven years old, and I still use them today when I'm working on a particularly troublesome spot. I can still recall the instructions I was given in dance class back when I was still in the beginning levels, and I apply those things to what I do every single time I dance nowadays.
Whenever I hear somebody say in a taunting voice, "that's what we learned in kindergarten", I can't help but realize that kindergarten, along with first and second grade, were really the most important years of our lives so far. Everything seems easy now, but back then it was a new challenge day after day, socially and emotionally, with so much to learn about the world. That age is when you learned the alphabet, which is used in language and reading, simple math skills, which you use without even think about it, the basics of sharing, which will get you through so much, and just how to interact with the rest of the world. In a way, those things are just like those stupid Cornell notes; we don't learn the alphabet or how add two and two anymore, but they're still there, spread out in the toolbox of skills for use any time.
And who teaches us these things? Teachers. Adults. Mentors. Parents. It's just the continuous passing of knowledge through generations and generations, and one of the reasons that humans are so spectacular. We just automatically teach one another things, and the ones who have that as an actual job are the ones who should be applauded the most.
The universe is weird when you look at it like this, but it's so amazing the same time.
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