I managed to keep my grades up enough to remain in what was then termed college prep as well as the honor society, but I honestly did not care for the subject matter, it was boring and seemingly pointless. I didn’t have a teacher who had a clue until I got to college, in hindsight. My lightbulb moment occurred via coursework in statistics and probability, a very amusing field in some ways.
“My lightbulb moment occurred via coursework in statistics and probability, a very amusing field in some ways”
my first challenging course was college stats. Our first test was on the third day. It covered the first three chapters of the book. All about descriptive statistics, averages, mean, median, mode, standard deviation etc. I was sick as a dog when I took the test and I barely remember taking it. I got a 40. The teacher stood up in class and said that anyone who got less than an 80 on the test was too stupid and should go drop the class.
I thought to myself who are you to tell me I am stupid. I dug in so hard I never got anything less than 100 on any assignment or test in that class. To this day that was one of my most enjoyable classes. I finally realized that the teacher didn’t really think we were stupid he was challenging us.
We had lots of practical case assignments and cool projects. Found out later the other classes didn’t take their first tes until 3 weeks in to the course and they didn’t finish half of the book. We had 2 books and finished them both. That was the class that taught me school is what you make of it and you can learn anything you just have to have the drive.
My stats teacher also had a saying. Contrary to popular opinion statistics don’t lie. Statisticians lie. We had one entire section of the course on manipulation and pulling apart public statistics cases and proving manipulation by the researcher. Fun class.