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Now that I finally have a bit of spare time for what feels like the first time in two weeks, I want to write a bit about school.
I think it's going really well so far. I just got back from my anthropology exam, which I'm fairly confident I aced. Yesterday I had a Spanish exam. I'm pretty confident of at least a B there, though to be honest I'm pretty anxious about it. The last part of the test was to write a paragraph from the perspective of having moved to Spain for college and looking to meet local friends by posting an introductory paragraph on the fictional Amigos.com. I think I did well, but I'll have to wait and see. I need to find better ways to study and work on my Spanish. Though on the subject of exams I'm nervous about, I had a history exam last week that I was really anxious about until I got the results. The professor posted a grade breakdown and, seeing that only two people had earned an A before a curve was applied, I was jittery with the hope that I'd at least earned a B. As it turned out, I was one of the two natural As. That was a rush. And tomorrow I have a geography exam which sounds like it's in mostly the same format as the anthropology one was. Given how this one went, I feel pretty good about that, though I'm going to study for it for an hour or two today.
But, apart from the subject of grades, school has really been pretty great. The difference between this semester and my last try at school is as stark as night and day. When I was attending school back ten years or so ago, I simply showed up at class, then left. I didn't talk to anybody, staff or fellow students. I was scared of them, and I didn't know how to be social or get to know people. Sometimes I'd have a hard time getting motivated to go to school and, during one span of a week when I was house-sitting and left to my own devices, sometimes just didn't go. And though there was one semester that I actually did really well, for the most part my grades were, to be honest, pretty crap.
This semester has been so completely different that maybe it ought to amaze me. I see myself and others in an entirely different light. Professors and classmates and other students aren't terrifying beings who I don't know how to interact with. They're just people. I've chatted at least a little bit with four of my five professors (the exception being my Spanish profesora) after class. I've expressed my interests to them and talked about books I've read or things I've seen that relate to class. I've had political discussions with my politics professor and one other student, a self-described activist who's I rather like. I talked about How to Lie With Maps to my geography professor. And after the very first history class session, when a lot of other students talked to the professor about their schedules and how to work around them, I waited until the end and asked her what the dissertation she said she's working on is about. (It's about jails in Chicago in the mid 19th century, if I remember correctly. I commented that I didn't know anything about that, and she said she sometimes feels like she doesn't either!)
I'm having the sort of trouble I expected in remembering faces and names of people I'm in class with. But it's ok. I have a lot of management skills that I didn't have the first time around. It's really only in Spanish that it's much of an issue because la profesora has us keep moving around and talking to different people. But I'm not scared to ask for names nor, should it come up, to explain why I don't remember people, and it really hasn't been an issue anyway. I've talked a little bit to classmates in all of my classes so far (some, like politics, more than others) and I don't feel out of place at all not being fresh out of high school.
I've also gotten involved in a few clubs. I've been regularly attending art club, where I've talked to more neat people. I'm planning to get involved with some projects they're doing, as well as possibly working as a gallery guard. The woman who manages the galleries came and talked about that (as well as a number of other things) on Monday, and I think it would be a ton of fun to talk with her in depth about the exhibits coming in and then be able to pass that knowledge along to the people who've come to see the show. (I need to send her an email today.) I attended a meeting of Parkside Advocates for Choice, a Planned Parenthood affiliated group. I'd like to get involved with something like that and do volunteer work, but so far I haven't heard anything about another meeting.... And I've attended a couple meetings of the anthropology club. Although in that case, the term club is used kind of loosely, as they haven't been organized enough to register as an official campus organization, and it seems that the meetings are kind of sparsely attended. They're talking about changing to a more workable time (which is too bad, 'cause it works just fine for me). I'm really happy to be involved in these student organizations and to feel like I'm a part of things beyond just showing up for class.
As I noted, maybe my ability to really engage in all these ways should amaze me, but I guess it doesn't really. I value and appreciate the fact that I can, but a big part of me was expecting it to be that way too. I've just been such a different person these last couple years. Just like it doesn't intimidate me to attend panels at a sci-fi con and get involved in conversations therein, I'm not intimidated by asking questions in class and engaging in discussions. As I walked down a hall last week, a momentary thought struck me that college is a little bit like a fandom convention. Much like a fan con has numerous echoes of the single professional convention I've been to, there are similarities in college as well. People finding common interests and being social. People going to panels or classes that interest them and learning new things and asking questions. Food and parties too, though I haven't really been a part of that side of things in school. But It isn't a stretch for me to be involved enough in my politics class, for instance, that the professor thanked me specifically for my participation; I genuinely enjoy being a part of it. Just as I've become an actively social person in my personal life, I'm one at school too. And I love it.
Another difference is my approach to doing coursework. That change doesn't stem from the same root; it's not a social one, and I'm not quite sure where it comes from. But it's still worthwhile I think. In high school, I was used to a particular pattern in the way classes worked. I didn't do much of the homework, and I aced all the tests. I didn't need to study; the material wasn't complex enough to worry about. A lot of it was just pretty easy. (I didn't get very good grades all the time, but there were a lot of reasons for that besides acedemic ones.)
This semester, I'm not taking anything for granted in terms of absorbing the material I'm learning. A lot of it actually does sink in pretty well just through being at lectures. It helps a lot that it's all material I'm really personally interested in (I'm even finding my politics class deeply interesting, which is the one I was least optimistic about enjoying). When it's things I really find interesting, like all that little-known stuff that was going on between the founding of Jamestown and the American revolution, or how the third amendment (no quartering of troops in private homes) feeds into the Roe vs Wade decision, it sticks with me pretty well. And if it's interesting enough, I'll often talk about it to my mom,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
farm_cat, and that helps it stay even more firmly in my brain.
But unlike high school, I'm not going into things thinking that I don't need to study. In fact, last week, as I prepared for my history test, I studied every single day for multiple hours. Part of it was the worry about the format; it was four short answers and one six page essay, and wow did that essay intimidate me. But I did a significantly more thorough job of studying for that exam than I ever had before, writing out practice essays for three out of the four possible questions that would be on the test, as well as most all of the short answer questions. And it paid off. Before the curve, and with the 1 point extra credit question, I scored 20.5 out of 20. (I lost a quarter point each on two short answers for not having dates.)
And I'm doing the same thing with my other exams. I studied for a couple hours last night, looking at my anthropology notes and text. Today I will study for a couple hours with my geography materials. And while I'm not nearly so intimidated about those test formats (the anthropology test was all multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, or matching questions, and it sounds like the geography test will be very similar), I'm very intentionally not getting cocky. I want a transcript that looks really damned good, and I'm going to invest the time necessary to get it. And now that I've actually taken a couple of exams, I feel a lot closer to certain that I can really accomplish that.
And that said, I think I'm going to go look at my anthropology notes. More later!
I think it's going really well so far. I just got back from my anthropology exam, which I'm fairly confident I aced. Yesterday I had a Spanish exam. I'm pretty confident of at least a B there, though to be honest I'm pretty anxious about it. The last part of the test was to write a paragraph from the perspective of having moved to Spain for college and looking to meet local friends by posting an introductory paragraph on the fictional Amigos.com. I think I did well, but I'll have to wait and see. I need to find better ways to study and work on my Spanish. Though on the subject of exams I'm nervous about, I had a history exam last week that I was really anxious about until I got the results. The professor posted a grade breakdown and, seeing that only two people had earned an A before a curve was applied, I was jittery with the hope that I'd at least earned a B. As it turned out, I was one of the two natural As. That was a rush. And tomorrow I have a geography exam which sounds like it's in mostly the same format as the anthropology one was. Given how this one went, I feel pretty good about that, though I'm going to study for it for an hour or two today.
But, apart from the subject of grades, school has really been pretty great. The difference between this semester and my last try at school is as stark as night and day. When I was attending school back ten years or so ago, I simply showed up at class, then left. I didn't talk to anybody, staff or fellow students. I was scared of them, and I didn't know how to be social or get to know people. Sometimes I'd have a hard time getting motivated to go to school and, during one span of a week when I was house-sitting and left to my own devices, sometimes just didn't go. And though there was one semester that I actually did really well, for the most part my grades were, to be honest, pretty crap.
This semester has been so completely different that maybe it ought to amaze me. I see myself and others in an entirely different light. Professors and classmates and other students aren't terrifying beings who I don't know how to interact with. They're just people. I've chatted at least a little bit with four of my five professors (the exception being my Spanish profesora) after class. I've expressed my interests to them and talked about books I've read or things I've seen that relate to class. I've had political discussions with my politics professor and one other student, a self-described activist who's I rather like. I talked about How to Lie With Maps to my geography professor. And after the very first history class session, when a lot of other students talked to the professor about their schedules and how to work around them, I waited until the end and asked her what the dissertation she said she's working on is about. (It's about jails in Chicago in the mid 19th century, if I remember correctly. I commented that I didn't know anything about that, and she said she sometimes feels like she doesn't either!)
I'm having the sort of trouble I expected in remembering faces and names of people I'm in class with. But it's ok. I have a lot of management skills that I didn't have the first time around. It's really only in Spanish that it's much of an issue because la profesora has us keep moving around and talking to different people. But I'm not scared to ask for names nor, should it come up, to explain why I don't remember people, and it really hasn't been an issue anyway. I've talked a little bit to classmates in all of my classes so far (some, like politics, more than others) and I don't feel out of place at all not being fresh out of high school.
I've also gotten involved in a few clubs. I've been regularly attending art club, where I've talked to more neat people. I'm planning to get involved with some projects they're doing, as well as possibly working as a gallery guard. The woman who manages the galleries came and talked about that (as well as a number of other things) on Monday, and I think it would be a ton of fun to talk with her in depth about the exhibits coming in and then be able to pass that knowledge along to the people who've come to see the show. (I need to send her an email today.) I attended a meeting of Parkside Advocates for Choice, a Planned Parenthood affiliated group. I'd like to get involved with something like that and do volunteer work, but so far I haven't heard anything about another meeting.... And I've attended a couple meetings of the anthropology club. Although in that case, the term club is used kind of loosely, as they haven't been organized enough to register as an official campus organization, and it seems that the meetings are kind of sparsely attended. They're talking about changing to a more workable time (which is too bad, 'cause it works just fine for me). I'm really happy to be involved in these student organizations and to feel like I'm a part of things beyond just showing up for class.
As I noted, maybe my ability to really engage in all these ways should amaze me, but I guess it doesn't really. I value and appreciate the fact that I can, but a big part of me was expecting it to be that way too. I've just been such a different person these last couple years. Just like it doesn't intimidate me to attend panels at a sci-fi con and get involved in conversations therein, I'm not intimidated by asking questions in class and engaging in discussions. As I walked down a hall last week, a momentary thought struck me that college is a little bit like a fandom convention. Much like a fan con has numerous echoes of the single professional convention I've been to, there are similarities in college as well. People finding common interests and being social. People going to panels or classes that interest them and learning new things and asking questions. Food and parties too, though I haven't really been a part of that side of things in school. But It isn't a stretch for me to be involved enough in my politics class, for instance, that the professor thanked me specifically for my participation; I genuinely enjoy being a part of it. Just as I've become an actively social person in my personal life, I'm one at school too. And I love it.
Another difference is my approach to doing coursework. That change doesn't stem from the same root; it's not a social one, and I'm not quite sure where it comes from. But it's still worthwhile I think. In high school, I was used to a particular pattern in the way classes worked. I didn't do much of the homework, and I aced all the tests. I didn't need to study; the material wasn't complex enough to worry about. A lot of it was just pretty easy. (I didn't get very good grades all the time, but there were a lot of reasons for that besides acedemic ones.)
This semester, I'm not taking anything for granted in terms of absorbing the material I'm learning. A lot of it actually does sink in pretty well just through being at lectures. It helps a lot that it's all material I'm really personally interested in (I'm even finding my politics class deeply interesting, which is the one I was least optimistic about enjoying). When it's things I really find interesting, like all that little-known stuff that was going on between the founding of Jamestown and the American revolution, or how the third amendment (no quartering of troops in private homes) feeds into the Roe vs Wade decision, it sticks with me pretty well. And if it's interesting enough, I'll often talk about it to my mom,
farm_cat, and that helps it stay even more firmly in my brain.But unlike high school, I'm not going into things thinking that I don't need to study. In fact, last week, as I prepared for my history test, I studied every single day for multiple hours. Part of it was the worry about the format; it was four short answers and one six page essay, and wow did that essay intimidate me. But I did a significantly more thorough job of studying for that exam than I ever had before, writing out practice essays for three out of the four possible questions that would be on the test, as well as most all of the short answer questions. And it paid off. Before the curve, and with the 1 point extra credit question, I scored 20.5 out of 20. (I lost a quarter point each on two short answers for not having dates.)
And I'm doing the same thing with my other exams. I studied for a couple hours last night, looking at my anthropology notes and text. Today I will study for a couple hours with my geography materials. And while I'm not nearly so intimidated about those test formats (the anthropology test was all multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, or matching questions, and it sounds like the geography test will be very similar), I'm very intentionally not getting cocky. I want a transcript that looks really damned good, and I'm going to invest the time necessary to get it. And now that I've actually taken a couple of exams, I feel a lot closer to certain that I can really accomplish that.
And that said, I think I'm going to go look at my anthropology notes. More later!