TMI Tuesday: School Days

By Alice-astro (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Below is a list of academic fields of study. For as many of these disciplines as possible, share a memory. It could be something that happened in class, an Aha! moment, something about the teacher or something that was helpful later in life.

Thanks to virtualsin.wordpress.com for this week’s TMI Tuesday theme.

1. English
I had a cool English teacher in high school. One time I remember we were reading Utopian and anti-Utopian books, and having a discussion if they really were. We read Brave New World, which many of us felt could be argued either way, and then I remember asking her why we didn’t read A Clockwork Orange (I’d seen it the summer before about 50 times, as I could not get enough of Malcolm McDowell – yummy). That spawned a discussion and she said she’d seen the movie at the theater when it first came out, at which point someone piped up and said, “You saw an X-rated movie?” I don’t think, ever before or since, I’ve seen someone turn such a shade of red in embarrassment!

2. History
History was not my forte. I do remember taking Art History in college, and got probably the worst grade of my life. Art? I could do, and always did well, even at the college level. Art History? Nope.

3. Foreign Language (French, Spanish, Latin…)
I’ve taken two languages so far (Japanese is this fall’s endeavor, just for fun). I started with Spanish in Junior High, and I remember our instructor was very into us writing little scenes to act out to learn new words, tenses, etc. It started to be a real competition, and we had fun one time doing “las tres caballeras”, singing the song with lyrics we made up, and drinking water out of beer bottles.

4. Psychology
I took quite a few psychology classes in college, and I think Drugs & Behavior, and Abnormal Psych were my favorites. Drugs & Behavior was a summer class, and we had one guy in class who I think had tried every drug we studied, both legal and illegal. He had some great stories. Abnormal Psych was just overall interesting, and I still remember a lot of it.

5. Mathematics
One semester in college I had to take Calculus III. My teacher was wonderful – he was from Africa, and very funny. As a junior, I went to very few classes, so I showed up for the first day to get the syllabus, and then popped in about 2 weeks later to see what was going on. He pointed to me and said, “Ah, I see we have a new student today. Why don’t you stand up and introduce yourself?” I was pretty embarrassed, but I didn’t want to go to class 4 days a week, so I stood up and gave my name and a bit about me. I think I surprised him, as he never had me do that again – he’d just smile and nod at me when I’d walk in. End result? An A in the class – not too bad.

6. Physics
Physics was never my thing. I took it in high school, and struggled the entire year. It wasn’t as bad as Economics, but it was a close second.

7. Chemistry
Chemistry I only took in high school, but it was a lot of fun. We were always doing experiments, and that year around Christmas, we actually used the burners and “chemicals” to make candy canes.

8. Biology
I took biology in college. The only thing I remember is staying up all night studying for the final.

9. Gym
What can I say? Gym was not a favorite class of mine. I much preferred dancing to jogging.

Bonus: Did you have sex education class in school? What grade or age did you have this class? Thinking back on the sex education class what was the most surprising thing you learned? Was this class helpful to you in your sex life?
We had sex ed for the first time in 5th grade, which was basically the period discussion. It came a bit late for me, which was unfortunate, because I would have liked to have known about that change before it happened! We had it one more time in 7th grade, and I don’t remember much of it at all, quite honestly. I can’t say either of them were very surprising, and neither was helpful in my sex life – I think experience was the best teacher there.

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