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School Stuff You Still Use
Tonight, I had to log onto a career resource and resume template website. I made an account my freshman year of high school; the teacher warned us to create a username and password we could remember because we would be using this website for a long time. The student teacher mentioned he was using it.
I was skeptical. There are many things teachers will tell you will be long-term things that you will use later in your education, or perhaps into your career. As it turned out, a few of these predictions were right, and many were wrong. Not that I think the teachers were universally wrong: Some students probably did go on to use those things, but not me.
I now have three mental lists.
- Things teachers told me I would use that I have yet to use
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- My trigonometry reference table. I understand that anybody who went on into calculus classes used this. I went into statistics classes and did not.
- My “prime after prime” prime number reference sheet from seventh or eighth grade. I was told to hang onto it but lost it within a year. I never needed a prime number reference sheet after eighth grade.
- The “Hand over hand” steering technique that they tried to teach me in driver’s ed. (Maybe I do use this sometimes, but I never think about the way I steer…I just drive!)
- MLA stuff. This one isn’t exactly true, because I did continue to use it during my first few semesters of college. However, upon getting into my major, I switched to APA, which I like better. When you are writing quickly, it’s so much easier to remember that Allen (2013) said something, rather than remember that this thing was said by Allen on page 11. I thought it was odd that they did not endeavor to teach us both systems in high school. English class focused on MLA, which made sense, but so did all the other teachers, with the exception of one science teacher my freshman year who requested APA formatting.
- Factoring and the quadratic equation. Again, people who had to take more than two math courses in college probably use this. I do not.
- Strategies to say “no” to drugs. I do not believe I have ever been offered drugs. Where are all these people that were supposed to be offering kids drugs all the time?
2. Things teachers told me I would use that I did use
- The aforementioned resume formatting site
- Library research skills, especially the online databases
- Typing (Although I didn’t learn it when I took the class, I just kind of picked up on it later, and my form is terrible.)
- Writing a business letter. (And a resume!)
- The metric system. I don’t remember if I was explicitly told “You will use this” or not, but every science class uses it, and it’s just good to be familiar with the system. I know I have needed to convert metric units a lot more than I have needed to convert customary units.
- A number of writing strategies. Tenth and eleventh grade were especially productive years because I was required to write a rough draft in 40 minutes.
3. Things nobody expected me to use that I used anyway
- Chemistry splash goggles. I bought a pair for a class and keep them around now in case I need to deal with cleaning chemicals that sting my eyes or such things.
- Standardized test skills. Dealing with computer screens or bubble sheets for a long time is a skill, as is the particular style of question that shows up on the tests.
Whoa! That is super interesting!
I wonder what he would think about the electric busses that are starting to show up in some cities. I think they are pretty cool because it feels space-agey, but I wonder how economical they truly are…
I don’t remember that one either.
Electric kisses?
Well the buses still have to be charged, but the left doesn’t want any power plants, so I guess they have to be charged by solar panels. At night, when the buses aren’t being used.
Now, I definitely remember the difference between “buss” and “bus” from my school days.
I know, right?
Where were these red ribbon week people getting all their information, anyway? It seemed like a mix of scare tactics and blatant exaggerations. I think drugs are (usually) bad and for the most part people shouldn’t do them, but an entire week of “Say no to drugs!” seems a little excessive.
And then I would get on the bus to go home, and the country song “Drink A Little Drink, Smoke a Little Smoke” would come on over the radio. Don’t mix Red Ribbon Week and the country top 40 station, kids!
I never have figured out the proper plural for “bus.”
Omnibuses.
I’ve used geometry and some trig in pattern drafting. We learned how to conduct searches in search engines. I think that will be useful again in short order. Most of my high school knowledge I reuse came from choir and music.
Saying no to alcohol was more important than saying no to drugs. And three- point turns and parallel parking.
Misspelling buses reminds me that I no longer use my spelling skills from school, either. If spellcheck doesn’t catch it, I don’t either.
I love my slide rules.
That’s one thing I do hear people talk about: In a situation where nearly everybody’s drinking, it’s hard not to. (To be fair, the anti-drug campaigning going on at my school mixed tobacco and alcohol right in there with hard drugs, so I guess the “saying no” does count as something I might use?)
I do three-point turns, but avoid needing to parallel park as much as possible.
Isn’t this the infinite for all buses?
Please! No more robot talk.
Now me and the mate were back at the shack
We had Spike Jones on the box.
She said “I can’t take the way he sings,
But I love to hear him talk.”
Way back in college, before Dill was born, but long after slide rules had been replaced, I was joking about my slide rule collection with my math professor. He said, “I still have mine somewhere.”
Next class he comes in with it and I bought it off him. It was a very high-end engineering model. The best part was he still had the sales receipt. He had bought it on the day I was born and in the county in Southern Illinois my family had spent a few generations in after the war.
There is a very interesting story behind the word we use, “bus.” Omnibus is Latin and literally means “for all.” The first guy to use the term was a Frenchman in Nantes. It originated in horsedrawn cars that were much like the later electric trolleys or the small motor omnibuses that replaced them.
If you can get your hands on your copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, you have everything.
I still have mine. Bought new. I won’t say what edition it is, but it is nowhere near three digits.
Too cool.
Avogandro’s number hasn’t changed, has it? Any updates to the logarithm tables? They add new stuff, though.
Cool. Now square a circle for us.
I use touch typing every day and I use algebra a lot.
And once during a structures exam in college, my knowing how to use scientific notation saved me when my calculator battery ran down.
My German teacher taught us a couple of song to remember which cases go with which prepositions. Entirely useless in my life but still memorable: a testament to the power of mnemonic devices.
To Mary Had a Little Lamb, the prepositions that take the accusative case:
durch, für, gegen, ohne, um
To The Blue Danube, the prepositions that take the dative case:
aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu
The second one is still alive and well.
There are two types of countries in the world.
Those that use the metric system and those that have landed a man on the moon.
I prefer Eshbach
The handbook of engineering fundamentals.
Oh, I forgot I remember a song from Spanish (which I only took two years of, and has yet to come in handy, but I would like to improve those skills, because I think it really could be useful to my career)
It’s Que Tiempo Hace Hoy? The weather song. I can remember many spanish words for weather, as well as some fun phrases like “No yo se…estoy in la escuela todo al dia!” (I don’t know, I’m in school all day!)
That’s a good one. But my all-time favorite is probably still:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.