Matt Wronka
<matt.wronka@altavista.net>
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[Last Update 2000.08.07]
Matt Wronka <matt.wronka@altavista.net> |
| Ramblings: High School |
My Closing Comments/Ramblings on:
Don't ask me how this will turn out. I have no idea. I have started with no plan at all. With that said, let us begin.
I came into my Senior year of high school with what can be considered three main goals: 1) never take an English course again, 2) never take a lab science again, and 3) get into a decent college.
Where did I succeed? Did I fail? Why did I choose these (esp. first two) goals?
When the year began, teachers often ask that same old banal question: "Why are you taking this class?" My English AP teacher was no different. My reply? "Intellectual Curiosity . . .and I never want to take another English class again." I never have to take an English course again. Getting a five on the AP® made no difference however. I really was telling the truth when I responded to the question. I told her (the teacher) I think twice in the days shortly before the test, that the test meant absolutely nothing to me as far as my academic future was concerned (in fact, the only tests that did really have any impact by this time were my Calc BC and CS AB tests).
Why did I never want to take an English course again? I never saw the use for them, quite frankly. I've covered some exceptions to this before, but generally, they were not very useful. Some of the literature was good, some was not. I find it much more enjoyable being able to read the good literature at my leisure without the pressure of writing an essay per night on insignificant trivialities such as "What color was Hester's dress today?" To paraphrase a friend, teachers killed English.
What about lab sciences? Well, normally I would have had to take a couple classes, but I have 16 credits shared between physics, bio, and chem. I only needed a class in two of the three. Why didn't I want to take a lab science again?
Labs sucked. They were worthless: rarely entertaining, and almost never insightful. Almost every lab was simply "follow the rules, and we'll tell you what you 'learned.'" All too often it seemed as if they were being done solely for the sake of doing them, and not as a learning aide as they should have been. "But it's an example of what you're learning put into practice" or something like that. The normal lab forms were often not even done based on the lab anyway--they were just like book work, often with answers given two steps down the road. Offer a lab more on the theoretical level (after the AP, we finally started doing this in Chem) and without all the hand holding. Make sure that the students know the theory in order to perform the lab (but of course, help them along the way if they need it). This allows them to put their learning to use.
I got into a college. Was it one of my original choices? Yes. Had it been my most recent top choice, when I heard from colleges? No. Honestly, I really did delay in looking at colleges. I hit the Boston area and northern New York, and that was about the extent of my research (actually, I guess that's about the best climate for me). I threw in a few schools from around the country for variety, but my three top schools had been for at least a year MIT, RPI, and Cornell (in some order). Those were the only three schools that were always on my list of prospective schools, and despite the addition of schools like CMU, remained at the top. RPI, as my guidance counselor advised, could very likely be my "safety school" and was the only one under this classification that I was actually interested in (my entire list was divided into the MITs and Cornells or safety schools). My list of safety schools was quite long, really (some free apps helped increase its length, but I stopped applying to all of them after a while), and I had little, if any interest, in most of them save Rensselaer.
Well, I got back my replies, and I had to choose between CMU, RPI, and a bunch of other schools I disliked. Well, I never did seem to enjoy CMU for some reason . . . RPI on the other hand seemed a great fit, and I found their Minds and Machines program intriguing. That, and it would be easy for me to graduate after only three years. So far, the people that I have met seem intriguing, and only time will tell what the future has to offer. Oh, it's also a highly ranked computer science/engineering school among other disciplines.