Sorry about the late article people. I had a couple busy weeks dealing with some school issues. Who knew lunch ladies disliked chocolate doughnuts?
To recap: this article is for those of you who are good students but are sometimes a little out of luck when it comes to grades. (If not, this article is not for you; go read a poem or something :P .) You work long hard hours, but get very little to nothing for your time. Well, guess what? That's okay! No one likes to study for fun anyways (or at least I should hope not).
Personally, I'm no genius, but since I'm an ancient being compared to the rest of you (though not ancient enough to vote yet ), I've learned a couple tricks throughout my eons of existence. This week, let's talk about English and Math.
English: English, unfortunately, has never been my favorite subject. There are simply too many books to read and not enough will to read them. So, on especially busy nights, instead of haphazardly spending hours trying to make sense of some old guy's archaic language, I go to my nearest library and get an AUDIO version of the book I'm suppose to read, like books on cassettes or books on CDs.
Now all I have to do is pop the tape into a player and listen to someone else read me the book while I do my other homework. It's easy, it's efficient, and you'll get more out of it than the kids using Sparknotes. (This does not mean you should not read the book when you have time; reading is still more informative than listening.)
Now, about class discussions: there will be times when you don't even have time to listen to audio recordings, and when the class has a discussion the next day, you will find yourself up the creek without a paddle, as the saying goes. So, here's what I would do: I would fake it. Instead of making direct comments, I would allude to the comments made by a classmate, like so: "I agree with (insert classmate's name here) about (insert comment here) because (insert some inference about human nature here). Personally, I (insert a personal anecdote here), which proves (restate point)." It works very well because the teacher, thinking you are utilizing what you are reading to evaluate the events in your personal life, will find you a profound being and give you those oh-so-needed participation points.
Math: Math used to be my friend, until it ran off with Calculus and took my intelligence with it. Here is something to keep in mind when combating Math: do not let it be the boss of you! Memorize examples from the teacher's notes because chances are that the teacher will use the same problem with different numbers on the test. If anyone's tackling any form of algebra out there, remember to use a real # (like 2) to substitute the letter x when you cannot work things out. Trial and error does help when solving strange problems.
Worse comes to worst, use daily objects to help you figure things out on multiple choice tests. For example, when I was learning about fractions, I thought about pie. If, say, the problem states 2/7 + 1/3, I would first think of 2/7 of a pie is roughly a little more than ?1/4 of a pie, then I add in 1/3 of a pie, and the result would be a little more than ?1/2 a pie (for the younger audience: 1/3 is more than ?1/4 and ?1/4 + ?1/4 is ?1/2) So any answer that equals less than ?1/2 is automatically not it, and same goes for answers extremely close to 1, like 9/10. That should leave you with less to choose from.
Well, that's all the space we have this week. Hopefully, there are still some of you awake after reading this article, and maybe a couple of you who actually enjoyed it. If so, please remind me next week to put out my next article.
With Love,
Mitsuy
