High school/College "passion"?

[Yamaha]

As I was doing one of my online classes for community college, I thought about if people really care about learning math, humanities, psychology, etc. by reading their books or getting information from other sources or asking their teachers for more learning on this specific subject.

For me, I don't really like my classes and I love my hobbies and rather "focus" or "learn" on that. For the homeworks I get from my classes, I almost never read a single page from my book and just skip to the index or definitions to find that one clue that's closest to one of the answers of the questions (multiple choice, fill in blank, mix & match, etc.) and I feel I'm not learning a thing, just rather skip through the homework/classwork/tests just to "pass" the class.


What you High school/College students think of this? Do you "care" about learning in that one class you're taking? Or do you just take all the "shortcuts" and pass the class and never come back to it?


Sorry if my grammar is off or that my words aren't "professional" enough for you, but I think my words get the point across. Thanks.

 

[Thund91]

General Education is so annoying.

There's a reason why most people choose a major that they're interested in; that could be anything from Theater, to Business, to Engineering, to Journalism. Because you actually want to LEARN about the subject and won't do exactly what you're doing.

Don't worry, cause we've all been there. I still do this with my current classes like Spanish and Anthropology...I take the easy way out and don't really bother studying because I don't have a "passion" for them. In my Theater and Speech classes, however, I actually take time out to read and do things.

 

[Yamaha]

I would like to share my experience with my Math online class I been taking lately and I have to for the A.A degree. I don't dare do the classwork/homework problems twice or take my time. There's this program for us College students to use for Math class and has many buttons to make a symbol like exponents since we can't show our teacher our work in physical contact, so turning in our classwork online is the only way. There's a HELP function that if you don't know how to do the problem right in the Math program. Well... for every problems I get for my math homework and quizzes, I just write down the problem and abuse the HELP function and "copy" that example by "substiting" the example problem with my actual problem numbers, symbols, etc.. It really helps and get my homework done in no time and my notebook would be filled with all the problems I copied ready for that chapter test.

Do I learn a thing? Barely. Does it help pass my class? Yes, so why not? I'd rather spent my time doing my hobbies or browse on the internet and find something hilarious or interesting...


EDIT: For my 2nd year in college, I will be looking for classes that would get me hooked or benefit me in some way outside that class. I'm tired of wasting time learning about someone in the 1800's from Humanities class, but it does get the work done and get me closer to that degree. Just would love to have a class I'd like and get me one step forth to getting college done. That'd be a bonus! :)

 

[Alex Practice]

I don't put much effort into classes that I'm not stoked about. I study and show up and whatever else I need to do for a good grade. But when I'm studying something like art history I just feel so despondent that I probably don't process all of what I'm reading due to zoning out. But when I'm studying something exciting or practicing guitar for class I tend to do better in class while putting less effort into it overall because when you're having fun it doesn't feel like work.

TL;DR yeah I take shortcuts and generally hate the classes that I don't absolutely love :P

 

[Lanturn314]

I guess I'm in the minority here in that I actually love my classes. In fact, I've always loved school. I like some classes better than others-- I find math and science far more interesting than, say, history-- but I've always made a full effort to do well in all of them. Don't get me wrong, homework can be a huge bummer, especially when it's unnecessarily long, but in general, I still enjoy school.

It's especially great in college now that I'm majoring in neuroscience and all of my classes relate to each other and to what I want to do in life. I actually feel like I'm going to use the information I'm learning now, so I study even harder :) I guess I'm a nerd, though lol

 

[whistle]

for me "passion" can be most accurately described as curiosity. it annoys me when I'm reading a textbook and it references a related concept without discussing it in-depth, because then I'm left wondering what I'm missing. also, something that has happened a lot this year is that my friends who are a year younger than me ask for homework help for classes I took last year. I always want to figure out how to do all the problems even when they've already finished some of them because otherwise I keep thinking "ugh I remember this problem was cool, now I don't know how to do it". etc.

the downside is that it is definitely annoying when I spend longer on a particular chapter in a book than other kids and get roughly the same grade on homework/tests because the "extra" reading/research I do isn't necessary for the class. it's a lot of work that doesn't seem to be for any immediate purpose. I also blame this part of me for the fact that I'm unable to choose a major.

but in the end it is very rewarding to know that you're learning lots of interesting concepts... a few weeks ago I told a friend that I was getting annoyed at myself for trying to figure out some minute and inconsequential concept for ochem (something so "basic" that you never need to actually know how it works, but is encountered a lot by virtue of its simplicity). she said something along the lines of "I wish I did that, it would make me a lot smarter".

not gonna lie... there have been days or even months when I feel like shit and don't want to do any work, so I take all the shortcuts, study "for the test" rather than "for learning", blow off reading in favor of sparknotes or gradesaver, turn in homework that I know is half-wrong, etc. but usually I feel really guilty when that happens and it's definitely not what I would do given infinite time, resources, etc.

I could probably write an essay on this (and probably will at some point) but that seems like enough for a Cong thread...

 

[Yamaha]

I could probably write an essay on this

Please do so... for the Smogon community and for this fine thread.

 

[Surgo]

I got more out of the classes I was "forced" to take as an undergraduate for general education requirements than I did out of my own major classes, and that's saying a lot because I went to grad school.

Pay attention. Do the work. You might not realize how useful they are now, but they will pay great dividends later.

 

[Eraddd]

I think general education is good in the sense it helps you become a more balanced and sophisticated person in general. You may think you won't need say, writing courses for the sciences, but try to write up a good lab report. You can be a great scientist, but you won't be able to write anything coherently =/. Being balanced will definitely help you as so many disciplines overlap each other.

And my passion also stems from curiosity. Just an experience of mine, many concepts and theorems my calculus teacher teaches, do not have proofs behind them. She makes us assume that they're correct, which annoys me to no end. I usually spend that class on my laptop or sleeping, because quite frankly, I can memorize that stuff anytime. It's the proofs on how to DERIVE the stuff that interests me to no end.

 

[Xav]

I always take the easy option, I just do whatever I need too to pass and then do whatever I want. For example, instead of studying super hard to learn chinese, I can sit next to the guy who speaks it at home and get him to help me. If extra reading isn't necessary for good marks or to pass then I don't do it. There are many things I would rather be doing than studying and working hard.

 

[cantab]

Well, in the UK we don't have this idea of "General Education". We don't even normally have the concepts of majors and minors. You enrol to study one subject. Albeit, how narrow or wide said subject is varies. Cambridge unusually places all science under the "Natural Sciences" umbrella course, so in lower years you'll study various different sciences while in the 3rd year (and optional 4th Masters year) you specialise.

On the one hand, I'm glad I didn't have to do a bunch of stuff I wasn't interested in, like I had to do at school. But on the other hand, had I gone to any other university I would have taken physics, which I disliked at Cambridge. The Natural Sciences course - which can be seen as lying somewhere between the usual British degree in one subject and the usual American degree with a lot of student choice - allowed me to instead pursue geology (and to a lesser extent materials science), subjects I found far more interesting (mainly because they didn't bog me down in mathematical details all the time.)

 

[DarthChake]

I had, until last year, taken all the shortcuts in my highschool. Last year I took two classes, psychology and spanish, that piqued my curriosity. The other classes I whiz through with A's and B's, but in those two I studied extra, because I was curious I worked to study more. I guess they are passions. Now I'm studying to be a translator. Heh, heh.