Lessons I Learned As A Child - Part 1

You learn a lot of important lessons as a child.  Some you learn from your parents, but most you learn from your teachers.  To me, teachers were like angels guiding me to my dark, unknown future.  My family still makes fun of me to this day, because of all the messages of wisdom I passed on from my teachers to them.  You want to know what my teacher says?  She says you need to stay with the goop.  (Apparently I didn’t know how to pronounce my ‘r’s’. Or my teacher was seriously confused.)  You want to know what my teacher says?  She says...

Well, I’ve started to notice a pattern with all these pieces of wisdom I’ve gathered.  They are all designed to prepare you for the future.  Like, in 4th grade when your teacher makes you use cursive all the time to prepare you for 5th grade.  But then you get to 5th grade and they could care less about whether you use cursive, but you better be sure to use a pen on all of your assignments, because they want to prepare you for 6th grade. And then you get to 6th grade, and all your preparation is in vain because you have to type all your assignments anyway - to prepare you for junior high, of course.

That’s how college is.

I learned all these valuable lessons as a child, to prepare me for life, and now NONE OF THEM APPLY.

For example, as a child you are taught to never take candy from a stranger.  Not in college.  You grab all the free stuff you can get - candy (wrapped or unwrapped, we don’t care), ice cream, soda, food handed out by unlicensed food handlers. . . we take it all.  I guess by the time you get to college no one is interested in poisoning or kidnapping you anymore.

On that same note, as a child you are taught to never talk to strangers, because strangers are scary and dangerous and such.  Not in college.  You sit down in your first class and your teacher already has you separated into groups with a bunch of strangers, because they want you to get to know everyone else in the class.

Third lesson I learned as a child: When it’s cold outside, you put a jacket on.  In college life this means: When it’s cold outside, you better put some boots on.  Otherwise, you’re going to be cold in that mini-skirt and tank top.

Which brings me to my final point.  As a child I was taught that math is used in real life all the time.  Now, teachers couldn’t always explain how the rule of the multiplicative inverse would help me out in life, but I trusted them.  And then I was taught a sad lesson in my astronomy class today.  You want to know the real reason why math exists?  It’s so that you can turn this:

“The acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables - the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. The acceleration of an object depends directly upon the net force acting upon the object, and inversely upon the mass of the object. As the force acting upon an object is increased, the acceleration of the object is increased. As the mass of an object is increased, the acceleration of the object is decreased”

into

F = ma. 

Yep, that is why math exists.

You want to know how I know?  Cause my teacher told me, that’s how.