Juxtaposition?

Often times you don't realize how valuable or beneficial something is until after the fact, until it's gone. It is hard to tell what will impact you, what will leave an impression on you until much later. For example, I took art last year and somewhat regarded it as a blow off class. 'I'm not learning how to write or add, how important can it be?' It wasn't until two days ago that I saw the benefits of the class. I went to a poster sale in the Union, and looking through the boxes of posters I noticed that many were reproductions of famous works of art. As I flipped through them, I could recognize the Van Goghs, Monets, Dalis, Ganguins, and others easily. It was because of my art class that I was no longer ignorant in the area of art. I was able to look at those paintings and appreciate them much more than if I hadn't taken art. This may seem like a "so what" thing, but to me it's not. I never would have imagined that I would be at college thinking about and thankful for my high school Art 1 class. Also, this brings back a memory from when I was in Algebra 2, back when teachers had websites through the school's website for their class. One day I went to the Algebra 2 website created by the "infamous" Doc. There was a little story on the front page that, in summary, was something like this: "A guy was walking along the beach when he encountered a supernatural being. The S.B. told the guy to pick up the pebbles, put them in his pocket, and then the next day he would be both happy and sad. So the guy did was he was told... he picked up a handful of pebbles and put them in his pocket. The next day he looked in his pocket and where the pebbles were, there were now diamonds. The guy was happy that he now had diamonds but sad that he hadn't picked up more pebbles when he had the chance. So it is with your education." And just like that story, I am now glad that I took art but I regret that I didn't allow myself to get more out of it. Naturally, I feel like a dork because I still remember this, but (illustrating my other point) it shows that you never know what will leave an impression on you, and by extension, you never know what little thing that you do will impact those around you.


Anyway, I took my first college quiz today. It was in calc and it wasn't very hard, although I do not know if I did well or not. At first, it was 2 questions long... one on the front of the paper and one on the back. Each question was divided into different parts... question 1 had 4 parts and question 2 had 2 parts, but because there wasn't as much time left to do it as he had planned, he told us not to do the second part of number 2. Number 1 was exactly like the problem in the chapter review that I did last night when I was studying for the quiz.

I think college has been good for me in an educational sense. Things that I had "learned" in high school but never actually knew how to do are now simple when I learn them here, and I wonder why I had so much trouble with it in HS. I believe the answer is that here I take the time to actually learn it, whereas in HS I didn't. I don't think it's the teaching/teachers or the books or the homework that is making the difference, it's my attitude. Plus, everything goes by so fast here. Well, not everything... the weeks and days aren't going by very fast, but the subject material is.

Today at lunch a girl came up to the table I was sitting at and asked if I was at the Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) thing. I said yes, since I was, and she said she thought I was there and asked if she could eat with me. I said sure and we talked over lunch. It's fun to meet new people. And, actually, she lives on my floor, so that's cool.