I didn't do any work in high school. I think I also had something going against my father as when I would do work I might or might not turn it in, and for a while there I got one D a term. One term it was Art.
Obviously my father's insistance that I apply mostly to Ivy League schools was close to insane; I got into Rutgers College of Douglas and Wittenberg, and was waitlisted and eventually got into Franklin & Marshall.
Despite USNews ranking Witt as Best Liberal Arts in the Midwest (admittedly not ranked in the Nationals) I took the logic that if they accepted me they must suck.
My ability to continue to do no work (although I did at least complete assignments) my first year and get all A's only enforced this. I'd write a draft, run spell check, turn it in, and get an A-. I'd fall asleep every day in Calculus, call Sam M in a panic before the tests, get him to teach me what I should have learned.... and get an A-. The fact that there were people in the classes who were failing or getting Cs didn't matter.
So I applied to and got into Wellesley, and after much tsurous eventually did transfer. And you know what? Wittenberg would probably have been a better education for me than Wellesley, based on class and teaching style and what courses were available. Even though Wellesley had the better name and rep. For one thing I could never have gotten away with not doing a thesis.
*nod* Yeah, I remember not working very hard except in the classes I did poorly in, which seemed unfair. I got As in math and Bs in science (because math didn't require I keep a lab notebook) from the moment I started getting letter grades, except for one quarter when I got a B in math and an A in science. (My school (http://www.keyschool.net/home.asp) didn't really believe in grades, since it was originally founded by a bunch of Johnnies (http://www.sjca.edu/asp/home.aspx), but they recognized that anyone applying to a college other than St. John's would need to be able to put a GPA on their applications, so they grudgingly added letter grades to the quarterly comments for grades 9-12 (the school covers pre-kindergarten through 12th grade). They might issue letter grades earlier now, I haven't checked in a while.) My grades in other subjects varied a lot, except that I always had trouble in history (and me a reenactor now -- go figure) and later on I had difficulty with French. I was constantly in danger of losing my financial aid (yes, I was on financial aid in high school ... actually even in Montessori school, though that was a less formal arrangement), until I suddenly realized my GPA would matter and brought my average up in my senior year. I'm pretty sure my poor grades for the previous three years were the reason I didn't make National Merit Finalist. (I had the highest PSAT scores in my class. The other three semifinalists (the entire class was only eleven students, BTW) went on to become finalists.)
The thing is, a lot of the reason I did as well as I did in the classes I was good at, despite doing relatively little work, was that my classmates would ask me for help. Re-teaching what I had just learned did more for me than the homework would have, and when people asked me for help before or during homeroom, my own homework got done as a side effect of helping with theirs.
So when I started at the University of Dallas (http://www.udallas.edu/), where I didn't already have a reputation as a go-to guy for homework help, very little of my homework got done. I'd never gotten in the habit of doing it without the reminder of someone else asking me for help. And I got into some even worse habits, that drove one of my math professors nuts once he figured out what I was doing.
The funny thing is that because I was surrounded in high school by geniuses who were also better students than I was, I thought of myself as below-average. (You'd think having people ask me for help would have been a clue, but noooo.) A common problem for freshmen at UD was that they'd go from being near the top of their high school class, the Smart Kid, the one who didn't need to work, to being merely ordinary compared to the rest of the UD students, and in an environment meant to make someone of their talents have to work. I didn't get hit with the self-esteem blow, but I did get hit with with the cost of poor study habits.
(no subject)
I didn't do any work in high school. I think I also had something going against my father as when I would do work I might or might not turn it in, and for a while there I got one D a term. One term it was Art.
Obviously my father's insistance that I apply mostly to Ivy League schools was close to insane; I got into Rutgers College of Douglas and Wittenberg, and was waitlisted and eventually got into Franklin & Marshall.
Despite USNews ranking Witt as Best Liberal Arts in the Midwest (admittedly not ranked in the Nationals) I took the logic that if they accepted me they must suck.
My ability to continue to do no work (although I did at least complete assignments) my first year and get all A's only enforced this. I'd write a draft, run spell check, turn it in, and get an A-. I'd fall asleep every day in Calculus, call Sam M in a panic before the tests, get him to teach me what I should have learned.... and get an A-. The fact that there were people in the classes who were failing or getting Cs didn't matter.
So I applied to and got into Wellesley, and after much tsurous eventually did transfer. And you know what? Wittenberg would probably have been a better education for me than Wellesley, based on class and teaching style and what courses were available. Even though Wellesley had the better name and rep. For one thing I could never have gotten away with not doing a thesis.
(no subject)
The thing is, a lot of the reason I did as well as I did in the classes I was good at, despite doing relatively little work, was that my classmates would ask me for help. Re-teaching what I had just learned did more for me than the homework would have, and when people asked me for help before or during homeroom, my own homework got done as a side effect of helping with theirs.
So when I started at the University of Dallas (http://www.udallas.edu/), where I didn't already have a reputation as a go-to guy for homework help, very little of my homework got done. I'd never gotten in the habit of doing it without the reminder of someone else asking me for help. And I got into some even worse habits, that drove one of my math professors nuts once he figured out what I was doing.
The funny thing is that because I was surrounded in high school by geniuses who were also better students than I was, I thought of myself as below-average. (You'd think having people ask me for help would have been a clue, but noooo.) A common problem for freshmen at UD was that they'd go from being near the top of their high school class, the Smart Kid, the one who didn't need to work, to being merely ordinary compared to the rest of the UD students, and in an environment meant to make someone of their talents have to work. I didn't get hit with the self-esteem blow, but I did get hit with with the cost of poor study habits.