Forever Tainted

…the answer to getting what I want. I graduated my IGCSE’s way back in 1998 or so. Being a student in an International School in Dubai, UAE, this was the high school equivalent. I went from completing my IGCSE’s to the American University, where I studied just two semester’s of Visual Communications before leaving school behind and heading into the workforce. I didn’t want to study Visual Communications and at the time, it was pretty much that, Business or Interior Design available as accredited diploma options. I wasn’t interested in any of these.

Nonetheless, with all this education behind me and the opportunity to study whatever the hell I want now; that ‘whatever the hell’ being Exercise and Wellness, I need to first be able to answer questions like, ’ One factor of a² -8a +12 is…’ to even be admitted. I have long since forgotten the methods to such equations and for the life of me I do not know the answer (or even how to go about getting it). All the math I do these days is calculated with either an electronic device or some sort of computer program. I do very little actual mathematical thinking.

So, I’m going back to school – and I mean high school, at least for Math 11 & 12, Biology 12 and maybe some English recaps (because lord knows I don’t know how to read or write). Of course, I’ll take these courses online. I have an orientation meeting on Jan 6th with an advisor about how to best reach my goals prior to my actual fulltime college classes starting on campus in September 2011. The idea of all this learning is exciting to me. I really must be a geek at heart!

But last night, Jod’s and I looked at some of these prep questions from the assessment test and laughed our asses off about how much we’ve forgotten and how little we seem to know now. It’s true that in many aspects of real life, you really don’t need to know all the mathematical applications you’re taught in high school – and many teens will probably grow to forget the majority of what they’re forced to learn. Like myself, they won’t even realize it. It’s suckers like me that decide more than a decade down the road we want a career with scientific edge to it; suckers like me that end up having to go back and re-learn this stuff.

It’s a good thing I love to learn.