I disliked school. I did have a few great teachers. I never did anything bad in school although I did have a conversation with the principal once for being noticeably late forty times.
In Grade Twelve there was a Calculus course offered in my school as an elective. I had taken math in Grade Eleven and enjoyed it. The teacher was Heidi Robinson. I needed an elective for Grade Twelve and she was going to be teaching it. There were few electives in my small town school and I figured an academic subject could not hurt.
The good teachers stay with you, as well as a few of the bad ones. She was one of the great ones and I learned a lot in that course and I understood the material.
After high school I took courses at a community college with the aim to transfer those to a university to complete a degree. One of the core courses for my desired program was Calculus that I had to take in my first year. The instructor was really bad (I remember her name but I will not mention it after all these years) however it was almost a carbon copy of what I took in Grade Twelve so I did really well.
I never saw Mrs. Robinson after high school but if I ever did run across her I would thank her. I never did use Calculus for anything practical and would have a hard time remembering how to do any of it now.
I did take a Linear Algebra course twice. I did not not fail it. At one institution it was a two credit course. When I transferred to a different institution they did not accept the course as it was a three credit course there, and they did not recognize the course I took. I had to take it again and it ended up being the exact same course. I enjoyed that one as well.
I liked school once I was out of grade school and I did get a degree.
I loved school and university, but calculus was way beyond me. I did okay at algebra but my fave was geometry. And you're right -- we always remember the truly good teachers/profs among all the mediocre and terrible ones.
ReplyDeleteI liked grade one (nice teacher) and hated absolutely every single bit of the rest of the years until grade twelve when I spent a lot of time on work placements outside of the school. Only went as far as Gr. 12 (business and commercial stream) and got out of there as soon as I could. Did really well in all the subjects except for math. Never could figure out how they could try to tell me that algebra letters added up to numbers. Luckily in the last two years of high school I could take business math/accounting where the numbers added up to actually BE numbers. There was a hugely attended big high school reunion several years ago and I flatly refused to have any of it.
ReplyDeleteThe best part of school was getting off the bus each day and going home.
ReplyDelete