quote:
Originally posted by EricML:
So, if you would, could you explain how it's been going, with the changes and all? Are the classes still challenging, but easily accomplished with PhotoReading?

Haven't gotten into the classes quite yet, but when I do, I'll let you guys know, most likely. I don't know, though. Part of me is thinking that I may not have time to make posts on forums. Even so - I think that they could be even easier for me because of my learning style, and my way of thinking. Everything I do, especially in mathematics is done very fast, otherwise I have a hard time comprehending the material. This year a friend and I were doing problems in our minds, and then only writing down the answer after punching out a single calculation into the calculator. The teacher would say:"Where's your work?"

"In here," I'd replied, pointing to my brain.

"Well, I can't grade it if it's there, can I?"

I said: "You can if I can explain it to you, or if you have knowledge of my intuitive capacities," and then I'd grin. He'd of course totally not get the tidbit of humor, and would instead decide to inform the whole class that if you did not show your work, you would fail.

When I was in elementary, I'd be in a race to get done with my work before my rivals in the class whom, of course, got into the gifted & talented program and I, as I was told, was "a few points short."

I know what some of you are thinking. 'It's not about racing to get it done first, it's about the grade.' I know this, and that's the whole point. We'd be racing for the best grade, and in the shortest time. I started out slower than many in the early grades.

I have faint memories of kindergarden, and me asking my friends for answers to single digit addition problems, because I didn't understand what numbers were. I remember that in first grade I didn't know how to read, and even into 2nd, I don't think I knew how to read very well at all. Somewhere along the line, I became friends with a guy who I know to this today(but for privacy purposes will not reveal his name), and he showed me the ropes, so to speak.

I began imitating him. The tricks he used for math problems, his way of reading, his way of solving puzzles, and how he somehow learned the rules of grammar better than anyone in the class.

I don't know quite how it happened, but by the end of 5th grade, I was one of the best young students in the elementary school, and was living quite a happy life.

Intermediate definitely changed my outlook, though. When I came from elementary to intermediate, I was the little kid again, but this time surrounded by brick walls, metal clad lockers, strict teachers with no sense of humor, and administrators that didn't let you wear normal clothes. I began to create school as a place where we were put for reasons of us doing crimes that we didn't do. It evolved into a perspective of prison. We had to go there, and if we tried to escape, they even did things to stop us - and especially stop us from doing it again if we did manage to escape.

It was even up until this last school year that I maintained this 'prison mentality.' My father had hired a tutor who I'd been seeing for close to two years, and after that hadn't made a difference(and actually made things a little worse, it seemed), he sent me to a therapist. After seeing her for a solid half a year or so, I stopped having to go recently. Most of the conversations with her were topics of philosophy, psychology, and other areas of interest that were mostly just topics of conversation, not conversations of therapy. The one thing I think I did get from her, though, was encouragement, and the idea to let go of that 'prison mentality' that I had been hanging onto for so long.

So I said, "Oh, alright," and just like that:let it go. My grades almost immediately rose. I still think of the school system of today as prison, I just simply don't decide to have it bother me anymore.

As I get older, am able to explain things better, and those around me in the schools begin to understand my ideas better, I'm in a far more positive environment, and from time to time, I'm having short little intellectual conversations with the teachers - something I haven't done since I was, you guessed it: back in elementary.

I have an idea that I'll be zooming through worksheets and such like I did back in the day once again with a grueling pace, renewed energy, and this time:a whole new book of tricks on my side.

-youngprer