Link to original post: [drupal=1778]Humanity courses are the worst ever. (It's a rant and stuff.)[/drupal]
For as long as I can remember, Math has always been my absolute favorite subject. I don't know if it was because I was exposed to it at a young age, my family being hxc Asian and all, but it was always something I looked forward to during my school days. Doing mad minutes when I was younger was so exhilarating and now that I'm older and my courses have become more complex, it feels so amazing to solve a complex question and see a full page of work. Its just so pleasing to see such absolute certainty at the end of your pencil. This is especially so in Physics, though I suppose it's not absolute certainty in this case. You should see my work, it's put together so neatly that there's nearly no open spaces on the page.
However, for as long as I've loved Math, and now Physics, there were of course, courses that I absolutely hated to the core. You guessed it, the humanity courses, or more specifically, English and Social. Math being such a black and white course, for a long time I always strived to get a 100%. If I were to tell you my Calculus mark, I'm sure none of you will ever talk to me again. Anyways, humanity courses prevented me from striving to be the best, and in fact, totally destroys my moral. As a leading cause of lowered academic averages, English and Social has always been a joke for me. A sick joke. My classes consist of nothing but interpretations and taking positions for meaningless debates. Really though, these courses were just lazy spare periods that marked you on how far up your *** you can reach for when an assignment or essay were to be assigned. Don't get me wrong though, I love to read, and I also love to learn about history, but when such questions like "to what extent...", "The author's main idea is interpreted through..." and my favorite "Choose the best answer..." well that's when my brain wants to leap out of my skull and dive into a toilet.
My best friend plans on becoming an English teacher, and as of the fall, is going to college to major in English. You'd question how the two of us could possibly be best friends seeing as how I despise English and I'm going to Uni for Engineering. Anyways, he loves English and boasts a 80s ranged mark in his course. In contrast, his mark in Calculus is border line 60 and in fact, he had to take the prerequisite course 3 times over in order to be admitted into the course we're in at the moment. The difference between his English marks and my Calculus marks is that his English marks fluctuates drastically from 90s to as low as 70s. As well, he has only achieved 100% once on an essay. However, in Calculus, I know when I get a 100%. I know when I do bad and when I do well. Even he admits, when writing an essay, you write the best you can and you hope for the best. Sometimes you'll do good and sometimes you'll do bad, depending on how your teacher is feeling that day. I know people say, oh well teachers aren't biased when giving out marks, and I can wholeheartedly say that that's false. We've done our experiments. Which brings me to my next point, humanity courses are so subjective that it's ridiculous. I hate having someone judges me with some kind of grade on my opinion and interpretations. There are always debates on questions on multiple choices and their respective answers when we mark them that it solidifies my position against humanity courses even more. My Math teacher said it best last year when he said that Math is and will always be the universal truth, and regardless of what you feel, the answer is what it is. There's no debate.
Also, my Math teacher last year is my absolute hero. He's eerily brilliant. If you're wondering what the extent of his mind is, he can log numbers in his head, multiply huge numbers with multiple digits like it's basic addition and he's just god**** bad ***. He uses a thesaurus as a door stop. And by door stop I mean he crams it by the door hinge.
Which brings me to my next point of my rant. A huge majority of the science/math department are full of wildly intelligent people. Some with impressionable knowledge of nanotechnology, and my current Physics teacher who loves explaining about the higgs particle, string theory, the LHC etc etc. In contrast, I visit the humanities department only to be disappointed to see half-wit teachers teaching only for the sake of being able to coach football or other such sports. It's disheartening, but understandable as well. English and Social is pretty much just a class where you take a dump on a piece a paper and hand it in. To go back to my best friend the English major, he has never gotten 100% on anything Math related ever, aside from the petty assignments and the like. However, another good friend of mine is very similar with me in terms of ideals and of course, he hates English. He literally writes about some goop and hands it in. I do the same. Whats strange is that we barely know anything about the material and we can still muster up a good 70~ percent on the majority of our essays. What struck me, and my best friend the most was that my good friend scored 100% on his personal response for his diploma. What did he have to say? "I pulled **** out of my ***." My best friend tried to do the same in Calculus and failed.
Anyways, I kinda went off on a few tangents during this post(GET IT LOL. TANGENTS? CALCULUS? HURHURHUR). If you read through that, that I'm both impressed and happy. If you read through and agreed, then holla back son.
Here's a tl;dr version in comic form that pretty much sums it all up:
http://xkcd.com/263/
For as long as I can remember, Math has always been my absolute favorite subject. I don't know if it was because I was exposed to it at a young age, my family being hxc Asian and all, but it was always something I looked forward to during my school days. Doing mad minutes when I was younger was so exhilarating and now that I'm older and my courses have become more complex, it feels so amazing to solve a complex question and see a full page of work. Its just so pleasing to see such absolute certainty at the end of your pencil. This is especially so in Physics, though I suppose it's not absolute certainty in this case. You should see my work, it's put together so neatly that there's nearly no open spaces on the page.
However, for as long as I've loved Math, and now Physics, there were of course, courses that I absolutely hated to the core. You guessed it, the humanity courses, or more specifically, English and Social. Math being such a black and white course, for a long time I always strived to get a 100%. If I were to tell you my Calculus mark, I'm sure none of you will ever talk to me again. Anyways, humanity courses prevented me from striving to be the best, and in fact, totally destroys my moral. As a leading cause of lowered academic averages, English and Social has always been a joke for me. A sick joke. My classes consist of nothing but interpretations and taking positions for meaningless debates. Really though, these courses were just lazy spare periods that marked you on how far up your *** you can reach for when an assignment or essay were to be assigned. Don't get me wrong though, I love to read, and I also love to learn about history, but when such questions like "to what extent...", "The author's main idea is interpreted through..." and my favorite "Choose the best answer..." well that's when my brain wants to leap out of my skull and dive into a toilet.
My best friend plans on becoming an English teacher, and as of the fall, is going to college to major in English. You'd question how the two of us could possibly be best friends seeing as how I despise English and I'm going to Uni for Engineering. Anyways, he loves English and boasts a 80s ranged mark in his course. In contrast, his mark in Calculus is border line 60 and in fact, he had to take the prerequisite course 3 times over in order to be admitted into the course we're in at the moment. The difference between his English marks and my Calculus marks is that his English marks fluctuates drastically from 90s to as low as 70s. As well, he has only achieved 100% once on an essay. However, in Calculus, I know when I get a 100%. I know when I do bad and when I do well. Even he admits, when writing an essay, you write the best you can and you hope for the best. Sometimes you'll do good and sometimes you'll do bad, depending on how your teacher is feeling that day. I know people say, oh well teachers aren't biased when giving out marks, and I can wholeheartedly say that that's false. We've done our experiments. Which brings me to my next point, humanity courses are so subjective that it's ridiculous. I hate having someone judges me with some kind of grade on my opinion and interpretations. There are always debates on questions on multiple choices and their respective answers when we mark them that it solidifies my position against humanity courses even more. My Math teacher said it best last year when he said that Math is and will always be the universal truth, and regardless of what you feel, the answer is what it is. There's no debate.
Also, my Math teacher last year is my absolute hero. He's eerily brilliant. If you're wondering what the extent of his mind is, he can log numbers in his head, multiply huge numbers with multiple digits like it's basic addition and he's just god**** bad ***. He uses a thesaurus as a door stop. And by door stop I mean he crams it by the door hinge.
Which brings me to my next point of my rant. A huge majority of the science/math department are full of wildly intelligent people. Some with impressionable knowledge of nanotechnology, and my current Physics teacher who loves explaining about the higgs particle, string theory, the LHC etc etc. In contrast, I visit the humanities department only to be disappointed to see half-wit teachers teaching only for the sake of being able to coach football or other such sports. It's disheartening, but understandable as well. English and Social is pretty much just a class where you take a dump on a piece a paper and hand it in. To go back to my best friend the English major, he has never gotten 100% on anything Math related ever, aside from the petty assignments and the like. However, another good friend of mine is very similar with me in terms of ideals and of course, he hates English. He literally writes about some goop and hands it in. I do the same. Whats strange is that we barely know anything about the material and we can still muster up a good 70~ percent on the majority of our essays. What struck me, and my best friend the most was that my good friend scored 100% on his personal response for his diploma. What did he have to say? "I pulled **** out of my ***." My best friend tried to do the same in Calculus and failed.
Anyways, I kinda went off on a few tangents during this post(GET IT LOL. TANGENTS? CALCULUS? HURHURHUR). If you read through that, that I'm both impressed and happy. If you read through and agreed, then holla back son.
Here's a tl;dr version in comic form that pretty much sums it all up:
http://xkcd.com/263/