Day 347 of 1000
Wow. We were very, very happy with the grades Kelly and Christian received in their summer classes. Christian took Chemistry from a hard professor and learned a lot about both Chemistry and how to take a hard class at a national research university from a hard professor. Kelly had a very interesting class from a 75 year old emeritus math professor called Foundations of Advanced Math.
At the beginning of the class he said it was possible to pass the class just by memorizing the proofs, but if you did it that way you would lose out on two levels. First, it would be hard to get a good grade doing it that way. Second, if the student did not have a “lights going on” experience during the semester, their math world would only involve ciphering and not “real” math. The amazing thing is that Kelly absolutely had that lights on moment.
It was late in the semester and she was really struggling. She had gotten great scores on the homework and some extra credit opportunities, but the first mid-term was very hard with only middling results. A little bit before the last mid-term, we could actually see the whole lights on thing happening. She did better on the second mid-term, but absolutely smoked the final. How good does it feel when you really get something with which you struggled. The getting it is better than the grade.
absolutely true!