Basic Chemistry

       Sophomore classes turned out to be a tad better than my extracurricular activities. Regents Chemistry sounds daunting, but actually was one of those classes that kids said it might be possible to get a 100% on the final exam, and Mrs. Gilmore was a wonderful teacher.

         Memorizing my notes for tests got a new twist – I would rewrite my notes in a notebook in beautiful outline form; by the time everything was rewritten, it was in essence memorized; or I guess a kinder way of saying it is that if I closed my eyes, I could see the outline in front of me, and during the test I could see where the answer was in my notes.

      All of my classes got rewritten outlined notes starting in 10^th grade and moving forward through most of college. Regurgitating what had been given to me in class is not the optimal way of learning how to think on one's own. But for some courses, such as chemistry, it was okay. Regents chemistry was just the basics – it takes a whole year to get all the basics down, and they really should be memorized. Advance Placement Chemistry, which I took two years later was a different story, and that is where the beginning of the stuff beyond the basics was taught.

       When regents chemistry was over at the end of sophomore year, I still had some notes that had not been rewritten. And it seemed wrong to have my notebook incomplete. But why would I bother to finish it? - the class was over. And when would I ever look at it again? But how could I leave scrap notes lying around with an unfinished notebook? I went back and forth on this for a while and eventually decided on completing the task of putting my scraps of paper into neat outlined form in my proper chemistry notebook during the first couple of weeks of summer vacation.

       And no, I never looked at it again after that.  But I did keep it around for a few years.

       Missed the perfect score on the regents final by a couple of questions. Would that the advanced placement chemistry final exam in senior year had been as stellar!

238 20150826 Chemistry Basics