Location Taken: Valparaiso, Indiana
Time Taken: January 2007
There are birds on the Science Center…
Well, make that “were birds”. This is a 6-year-old photo, after all. I suspect that same flock still rests on the lip of the roof even to this day.
I’m not actually sure why that particular roof is curved. My first though was “Hey, it’s the physics and astronomy building, maybe it’s a planetarium!” But I did take the basic astronomy class there, and we never went into that room. There’s a full-out observatory hiding in the darkest corner of the campus that we used instead. And if the basic astronomy class doesn’t use the planetarium, it’s probably not a planetarium.
Alas, I never did go in that room. Never even really considered it odd up to now. And I only had two classes in the building in the course of my studies at this college. Well, three, I guess, if you count Astronomy and the associated Astronomy Lab to be separate classes.
The other was Classical Mythology, which was just using a spare classroom in the building.
That was one of my “for fun” classes. A few of my friends had taken that class and said the teacher was excellent. And I’ve always liked studying Mythology (like I said two days ago), so I gave it a whirl.
And sure enough, the teacher and the class were excellent!
Though I may be a little biased. I rarely studied for the class because, well um, I knew a lot of the material already. And when it’s material you know at that level, studying is redundant because you’ll know what the stuff is for the tests just fine.
And well, I got the highest score in the class, and 100% on all but a handful of the tests. A couple I goofed on a question, and one was on smaller myths that I hadn’t encountered and I had forgotten that I actually needed to study for that test… Still got 70% or so, though.
But then, I’ve always been good at tests. Might be related to the fact that I enjoy learning, so I actually file away all the nifty things we learn in class into my long-term memory rather than dump most of the info like so many people seem to do. I’m that (probably somewhat irritating) person who finishes the test first AND gets the highest score on it.
Don’t be too envious, though. Since I learn the material so fast, the homework seems pointless and redundant to me, so I kept putting it off and never finishing it. My grades were certainly not all A’s, just the ones for classes that graded on tests and in-class projects rather than homework. And my sister both learns just as well AND has a perfectionist streak that makes her excel. She was the one in the family with the straight-A high school career.
We both maintain that the other is the smarter one. And in some ways, we’re both right. I’ve got a stronger tendency towards problem solving and I do it everywhere, while she’s got the work ethic to apply her intelligence properly. Both tend to fall under what “smart” people do. To use RPG terms, we’ve both got the same high INT score, just use it differently.
