Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Studying

Its been said that war is the way that Americans learn Geography. Apparently, thats also true about being a mentor

I sat down this morning to read Chapter Six in the Social Studies text used by my mento. How hard can this be, for goodness sake, I thought. It's sixth grade material! So, like a good doobie, I flipped through it, jotting down the titles of the sections (man, will this chapter ever end?), and then going back to read the introductions (yeah, yeah, central america is like a kaleidoscope, got it), and then moving on to actually read, well, skim, the parts. What the heck does a revolution in Cuba have to do with the general topic of The Economy? And isn't it nice how they just skipped over why so many natives died when the Europeans showed up? But I did notice things that I hadn't noticed, first pass through, so I'm thinking Gosh, this method of studying really does work, guess this is why they pushed it back when I was in school. Wish I'd used it then!

And then I come to a quiz, part of which is Locate these Central American Countries on the Map, to which I'm thinking Well, hell, thats a snap, I --

Costa Rica isn't an island? Really?

I'll be damned.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I often wonder if I don't watch the show "Are You Smarter than a 5th Graders?" because I think its stupid and I'm not really into game shows or maybe deep down I'm really afraid that I am not smarter than a 5th grader. heh.
Back to pretending I'm a smart university student (*quickly googles costa rica*)

Cerulean Bill said...

Its because fifth graders now are smarter than when you were in fifth, and you were smarter when you were in fifth than when I was in fifth. My daughter is studying things now that I didn't get until I was halfway through high school.

But the insipid quality of the prose remains about the same.