I guess I’m just full of analogies today, but here’s another. Learning math or science is more like learning tennis or learning spanish than it’s like learning a humanities class. </p>
<p>In the humanities such as a history class you read about a few causes of some event and you’ve got it. If you want to stretch you compare it to the causes of some other event (eg. how did the slave trade lay the foundation for the southern antebellum economy?) but by and large once you’ve read it you understand it.</p>
<p>The other classes (math, science, tennis, etc) take practice. You may read an calculus theorem and think it all makes sense, but it takes practice to be able to apply it to problems. Just like tennis; the concept is ridiculously simple – hit the ball over the net and inside the lines, don’t let it bounce more than once on your side. Actually executing that is a different matter Or a foreign language, or a musical instrument. </p>
<p>Interestingly, one of the humanities that is closest to math/science in requiring practice is the one people often find difficult. It is econ. Just reading about supply/demand curves isn’t enough; you need to practice with problems too.</p>
<p>So my suggestion is that you might be approaching science like it is another humanities class. Try approaching it like learning to play tennis. You learn a concept, then practice, practice, practice. And the books I mentioned earlier are great for that since they have the solutions as well as the problems.</p>
<p>Yeah, it really helps to actually do some problems… (really wish I was smart enough to take AP chem junior year, would’ve helped a lot, though I hate memorization)</p>
<p>Still, I’m good at it, you can reason and BS a lot of stuff (like most of you can probably churn out essays). Y’know, I still have no freaking idea what I learned in Physics this year.</p>
<p>“If you truly believe that, then you didn’t study history well. Everything that happens today is because of what happened yesterday.”</p>
<p>i think what was meant here is that to study and understand the events of Civil War you don’t necessarily have to understand and remember well the events of Revolutionary War – history profs at my school all have their favorite period in time that they focus on, while they might not know other periods of time as well – while in chemistry you cannot say “oh, i like total synthesis but i hate reaction mechanisms” – same thing for math and physics and more or less biology – you cannot move on to more complex topics while you barely have a grasp on fundamental ones – students who do worst in science are usually the ones who never learnt their fundamentals well</p>
<p>but if you’re taking two quarters of history, suppose, and during first quarter you are learning about Revolutionary War while during second about Civil War – it is possible to get an F in first quarter and then an A during the second one – same thing does not happen with physical and life sciences and math – if you fail the very initial basic courses chances are you’ll be struggling all the way through intermediate ones – with sciences, initially there is less stuff to memorize, but much more stuff to relate and interconnect which is not possible to do well if you missed certain points – when you study history as a student at college, each history class focuses on one period or one place and it is not necessary to know other periods of time or history of other places well to succeed in your current history class</p>
<p>This is definitely true. History is probably the least skilled course, IMHO, I found it to be pure memorization.</p>
<p>Though I think English (and to a lesser extent, Philosophy) is as much skill-based as any of the mathematics or sciences (well, maybe not Physics). Writing essays, knowing how to skim and read, being able to critical analysis on a book is, IMHO, quite skill-based, though maybe it’s just because I suck at it.</p>
<p>yeah, i’ve never been too great in science & i’ve never enjoyed it… i probably never enjoyed it because i pretty much stink at it … but yeahh.
but i got an 89 on the earth science regents ! go mee… don’t laugh at me or anything because i’m HORRIBLE in science and by far is my worst subject. … so, yeah, all you smart COLLEGE CONFIDENTIERERS … don’t laugh… because i know there’s some harvard bound people out there laughing at me and how stupid i am…</p>
<p>ok, i’m done with rambling on now about science.
the end</p>
<p>History was one of those subjects, I’ve ALWAYS been good at it. But I have noticed all throughout high school, it’s been pure memorization. Even if there is controversy to what happened to whatever 1,000 years ago, my teacher OR the AP Exam wanted some specific answer, that I didn’t quite agree with.</p>
<p>With Science, I’ve NEVER (in my high school years) had a teacher who could apply the subject into real life situations. Imagine having a chemistry class with very few labs and nothing but notes and memorizing a bunch of formulas and vocabulary words. Okay, what could I possibly do with it? Same with Physics, although we did a lot more lab activities. I think Physics is pretty cool, but the word problems used to throw me off. My Science teachers were good with their subjects, but they were AWFUL teachers. It was like the only way you could understand them was if you were extremely good with Science. Science in college is going to be VERY interesting.</p>
<p>Science classes in college do tend to have bad instructors, probably because they are more interested in research than teaching and because of weeding people out. Some departments are filled with TAs who barely even speak english. Introductory classes like general chem can be pretty boring because all you do is plow through the syllabus and prepare for the exams instead of learning anything to understand it or because you want to.</p>
<p>I hate science. I never liked science, hate it now, and never will like it, primarily because I’ll never take science beyond the ABSOLUTELY required amount, and if I absolutely have to, I’ll be focused on one thing and one thing only: minimizing the severe damage to my GPA. This means I only need to know barely enough to be able to regurgitate enough information to get a B- or C. </p>
<p>This is quite comforting since I suck at science and most likely in college I won’t get any higher than a B- in science in college. This is why I’m majoring in finance in college yay :)</p>
<p>i like science…very interesting subjects…biology…chemistry…physics. i like them in this order. Science has changed our lives…there has to be something good about it…u just have to find out what part of science clicks…that’s all…however…its better to do something else if u don’t have the time to experiment…just my 2 cents</p>
<p>Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion. You have every right to like or dislike science, but whatever your stance may be, please respect the fact that, like anything else, science plays a crucial role in education, society, and civilization. Everybody here owes their life to it in one way or another, and dismissing it as “pointless” or “stupid” is being extremely shortsighted.</p>
Or a foreign language, or a musical instrument. </p>