school vs fun

[bucket]

is it even possible to have fun being young and excel in school?!!

[Collin Li]

Yes.

There are two classes of possibilities:
i) Those who find excelling in school, or related activities, fun.
ii) Those who can have fun (in the ways you might perceive as fun) and can excel in school (a skill that most people learn in university, I think).

Those two are not mutually exclusive either.

[droodles]

wrong. In order to achieve 99.xx or high ENTER you must:

- Fun and VCE are two mutually exclusive events. So are Fun and Studying.

IREST MYCASE

[Damo17]

Yeah, one can have fun at school and excel. I am one of them, being ahead of both my maths classes by almost half a year now, produces much criticism but I enjoy the topics and learning maths so I go ahead and have initiative that many of my fellow class mates lack deeply. But one negative of this is isolation, to do this requires many hours spent away from the world studying but to me learning new concepts and enjoying then is something  I am proud of though many people do make fun of me. I am lucky I am a type of person who can take criticism in my stride and be unaffected. Fun is seen in the mind of the beholder.  My Maths Methods teacher dislike me for going ahead saying "i don't know what you were thinking, I can't teach you anything. I think you have done the wrong thing." He said this a end of last semester when he found out I had gone way ahead and done the whole years work. I was about to say that what your saying is that by that, you would be denying a person to go ahead and learn, deny them fun. I felt he was so wrong but didn't want to make waves with him.

Does anyone think that it is bad to go way ahead of the class?

[brendan]

"i don't know what you were thinking, I can't teach you anything. I think you have done the wrong thing."
Does anyone think that it is bad to go way ahead of the class?

http://www.theage.com.au/education/teachers-fear-smart-students-20080713-3ebt.html

[/0]

Ignore your teacher Damo17, no offence but he/she sounds like a jackass. As long as you make sure you learn the material properly and arne't just skipping around the place then that's definitely good.

[bturville]

your teacher sounds like a dick. fortunately, all the teachers i had loved it when/if I worked ahead. (not that I made it a habit, haha)

the worst kind of teachers are those ones that make you use THEIR method for doing something, and discourage or completely ignore any other ways, even if they are clearly better! thats happened quite a bit in my maths across the years. ehh.

[brendan]

Does anyone think that it is bad to go way ahead of the class?

No. The fact that you are asking this means that some of your classmates attitudes have rubbed off on you.

Their attitude is conveniently self-interested. A lot of things in life you get is through competition. So there are two ways to get a ahead, lift yourself up or pull down others. It seems like your classmates are going for the latter. Roland Fryer, a professor of economics at Harvard University, examined this phenomenon in the USA where it manifested itself as some black youths ridiculing other more successful black youths as "acting white".

The term for those sorts of attitudes in Australia is the "tall-poppy syndrome".

If that quote from your teacher is exact then it seems that your teacher is more concerned for his own sake than that of his students. He is simply self-interested. All he cares about is his own satisfaction, not that of his students.

Another explanation for this attitude is that most teachers matriculated from high school with percentile rankings in the range of say 40-70%. So if they encounter a student with a higher percentile ranking, they will try to bring that student down to make themselves feel better.

It's nasty but rational behavior.

[ice_blockie]

It's not bad to go ahead but I'm interested to know as to how your teacher found out that you had finished the whole year's maths course.

Was it "Hey, you've finished the whole maths course haven't you?" "Yeah, in fact! I know discrete probability, normal distribution and continuous probability and done all the chapter q's" ...it's probably not the best answer to give given that when exam time comes around and you annoy the teacher for the 19945th time they might refuse.

Or if they just said "Stop learning ahead, coz I can't teach you anything" then as divideby0 said, they're a jackass.

[bucket]

i think i didn't phrase my question properly lol.
what i meant was do you think it is possible to enjoy your youth, and at the same time achieve a 9x.xx enterscore (which is a great confidence boost).
because when I think that in a few years i'll be working full time, and doing so for 40 years or so, I find it hard to be motivated to study as much as I should.
then I think about not getting a high enough enterscore to get into the course I want to be in, and then on to get a good job.
it's so annoying!

[bturville]

actually, any time a student in a previous year completed the course early (and i remember this happening for english, chem, AND methods), my teachers would draw attention to it. kind of uses it as a comparison, to show what hard work really was, and how much effort some people put in.

it worked on me, because i thought if thats the work the people who got 50s did, then i really needed to up the effort!

edit for the reworded question: its DEFINITELY possible to enjoy your youth and get 9x.xx
but that whole dilemma was always a pain in the arse for me too. i just figured that i could slack off at uni for a few years, as long as i passed. haha.

[Damo17]

nice article,thanks Brendan, it's true for many teachers, your right divideby0. He asked me what I was going to do and i said i'll revise abit during class and go ahead to next years work. He said "I haven't done the methods 3+4 book for years, who will help you? I think you have done the wrong thing!"
That hurt me abit but it's the way he said it, and was talking to me infront of the class, putting me down, didn't even have the good manners to talk to me outside or after class, he makes methods class bad for me now. Went from my favourite class to almost my least fav. Just so annoying.
I am the first to admit I am no genius as others in the class got the impression, I just love math, understand it, I may not be the best in class but unlike the others I am willing to learn new topics instead of parting and killing brain cells.

ice_blockie- at the end of unit 1 my methods class was under 10- (this is unit 1 +2 by the way) and for unit 2  i got put into another class, we had not met previous to this, our first class was about rates of change, he was waliking around and saw i had completed it already and had a look at my book, he the looked surprised and the later on called me up the front of the class to basically disrespect me and put me down IN FRONT OF THE CLASS, not very professional. Our first meeting was terrible, he still pays almost no attention to me, but expects me to do every single question in class again, that's why i hate methods class.

[brendan]

Take your concerns to someone higher up. If they don't do anything, then vote with your feet and move schools. I suggest applying to Melbourne High School, University High School, or any other top state school.

I tend to think of it this way: if people are trying to pull you down, it probably means you are doing pretty well, so just ignore them and don't let other people get to you, because chances are you are simply going to end up making more money than them. Simple as that.

[Collin Li]

I agree. This is tantamount to bullying.

[Damo17]

bucket- yes you can, i study hard but allow my own personal time where i do as i wish, i enjoy my youth and am hoping for an enter in the mid 90's. But everyone who wants to get high 90's has a different take on how to enjoy their youth, a person may be content with staying at home and watching movies, or going out and playing with friends, that may not impact heavily on their study's, but a person who like to constantly go out partying with friends every weekend may only have a small amount of time to study. As I have heard everywhere, balance is the key to success.