September 27, 2006

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  Internet Island Topic Entry for Topic 19: Back To School

  
  

  19.03: What did you learn in school? Write about the subject which had an effect on your life. Did you make any decisions in school about your life based on any particular class or mode of study? Is there any subject you wish you would have taken that might have steered your life in a different and possibly better direction?

  
  

  When I was in elementary school, my favorite subjects were spelling and history. I enjoyed art, but I didn’t excel like I did in spelling. As I passed into junior high, my English teacher in 7th grade inspired me to begin writing, and I started writing poetry while in his class. To this day, I have a pretty large vocabulary. Spelling lessons graduated to vocabulary lists, and I scored more on verbal than on math in my SAT tests. Math was never interesting to me at all, but in high school, my geometry teacher was fantastic, and he taught more than just the subject, so for that year at least I seemed a bit more interested in math.

  
  

  I’ve always enjoyed history, although back in the 60s the California and U.S. history that was taught didn’t touch upon events like why California joined the union, or detail the full history of manifest destiny. I filled in the blanks later with independent study, but the canvas of history that was taught in school was enough to get me interested in delving further into what I wasn’t being taught.

  
  

  High school wasn’t that much a challenge, as I had always received good grades in school, and I finished my required  courses by my junior year, which meant I could sample more “electives” in my senior year. One elective I maintained through all four years was Journalism. Although I didn’t expand on my knowledge of this subject in college, for four years in high school I was heavily involved in learning the subject, and writing for and editing the school newspaper. I was the first junior in the history of our high school to be appointed editor of the paper. To this day, I think my interest in magazine and website layout, plus writing of course, was inspired by my exposure to journalism in high school.

  
  

  Another elective which shaped me in high school was drama. I only took Drama 1 when I was a senior, but I had already been in school plays, and our Drama teacher was the English Dept. head, so we knew each other before I took his class. I expanded on Drama classes in college, but only for a year. I never took any more journalism classes in college, but did take telecommunications.

  
  

  Throughout high school, history courses still enchanted me. I took some social science classes in college, but no history. However, the subject of history is one I’ve always loved, and I would spend hours at the library reading history books. Now, thanks to the internet and cable channels like The History Channel, I can attend my own History classes on an almost daily basis. I still enjoy words, and I am constantly looking up new vocabulary words on websites like dictionary.com and encarta. The interest in these subjects has never left me.

  
  

  Whether or not a subject was a favorite, I really believe I learned a lot during my schooldays. The most important thing I learned, of course, is that one never stops learning. Or else, one shouldn’t want to stop learning. To this day, I try to learn something new every day. My careers in the retail industry and in the electrical industry, where I have now been ensconced for almost two decades, have also served to teach me. I’ve always been quite a “handyman”, taught by my father, who with the help of his wife and children built our family home almost from scratch. This familiarity with tools and construction helped me in my early career in the electrical industry, where I started building  control panels. I now oversee the panel construction department in my company. Although I rarely actually build anything these days, I design everything, and I’ve had the opportunity to build all the types of panels we manufacture at one time or another.

  
  

  The discovery of the internet fascinated me in the late 90s. I treat the internet like the world’s largest reference library, and because of the vast amount of knowledge stored on it’s many websites, I am able to continue independent study on almost any subject of which one can think. There is a lot of hearsay and lies on the internet, co existing with the truth, but for the most part, sites like Wikipedia are monitored and updated with valuable material. When I was in school, kids sometimes copied word for word articles from the World Book Encyclopedia for their papers. Now it’s internet sites like Wikipedia that have become the encyclopedias of the 21st century.

  
  

  No one subject in school had an effect that changed my life, because, as I have written many times on this blog, I adored education, and I wanted to be a teacher for most of my young life. Specifically, I chose the subject of English Literature, and this is the subject I would have taught, if I had been able to further my study. I did get through the four years of college, but dropped out when my father died, and I never returned so I could take the Education classes which would have made me a teacher. If I had to choose the subject that impacted me the most, it would have to be English LIterature, although classes in college detailing 17th Century prose and poetry could sometimes be overwhelming.

  
  

  In my college years I minored in Film History. Back in the early 70s, this was one of the few ways I could view older films. Home video and cable channels like Turner Classic Movies had not been invented or created yet. My love of film lore began with my exposure to film during childhood watching matinees and television, but it was film histroy at USC which cemented my enamoration of the history of filmaking. I still remember seeing early silents, foreign films, and full blown Hollywood extravaganzas, along with pertinent information from the profs, some of whom, like Arthur Knight, were prominent critics and historians, while sitting in class at USC in the early 70s.

  
  

  English Lit, History, Journalism, Drama, Film History. These are a few of the standout subjects which impacted my life. I’m still learning, even in my mid fifties. The “age of information” makes it easy for everyone to be expert at most any subject in which they are interested.

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