Yes, I learned a lot of math. And I hope I remember a good majority of it considering I'll see it from time to time in my life from here on out. But my senior year calculus class with the great Mr. Wilson taught me way more than just punching numbers into a calculator and carrying the one.
1. Accuracy is important.
Math class forces you to be 100% accurate. A lot of other times in life, you can get away with (or get partial credit for) being partly right, but not in math. You are either right or wrong. You follow the pre-established rules, or you fail. Most people don't like to follow these rules or be restricted by an established pattern or set morals- they'll tell you there really is no right or wrong. Whether they want to hear it or not, they're the ones who are actually wrong! A society can't function properly without rules and standards. There have to be rights and wrongs, and we have to be accurate and law-abiding citizens within those parameters. "Partly right" in the business world can destroy you. We all have to learn to be completely accurate in everything we do and say.
2. Procrastination is deadly.
Mr. Wilson made homework due weekly instead of daily- and with good reason. We all have our "busy" days and our "easy" days, and some flexibility on due dates is a good idea. And yet, the good students quickly learned that even though homework wasn't due for a while, it was crucial to do it every single day. If you didn't do it daily, you got too far behind to ever get effectively caught up and prepared for upcoming quizzes and tests. This same concept has been multiplied 100x over in college. A lot of professors collect everything at mid-term and the end of the year. You can sit around for one month and do absolutely nothing, but you will never get everything done the week it's due. The procrastinators (which I reluctantly identify as sometimes) are the ones who quickly flunk out and get fired from their jobs. Long story short, you gotta work daily in order to meet your long-range deadlines.
3. Cheating is deadly.
When you copy, you learn nothing. After all, school is about LEARNING and making yourself as intelligent as possible. GPAs mean very little to employers –– they need people with knowledge and skills. If you copy your way to a passing grade, you'll be well acquainted with the unemployment line. You must learn to succeed. That's why Mr. Wilson made test and quizzes the vast majority of our grade while homework counted for very little of the final percentage. Homework is essential in order to understand the concepts, but you prove you learned it when you take a quiz or test. If you can't perform under pressure, what good are you to the boss?
4. Get along with others!!!
Mr. W sat us at tables, made us do homework in groups, and assigned group projects because he knew it would benefit us in the long run. In both college and the workforce, you have to continually create projects and products with the assistance of other people. Whether you like them or not, you have to learn to cooperate and work with them. People who are vastly different than you are crucial to you because their ideas, abilities, and interests will help you do things you would never have accomplished completely on your own. Yes, people can get annoying, but we all need each other to "make it" in today's world.
5. Reading and writing are vital.
We were given periodic writing assignments that were very time-consuming. What??? In a calculus class?! Yes. Employers and colleges are screaming for students who are well-read and can write effectively with proper grammar. Furthermore, as computer networks and email become more prominent, more people will have to type/write for correspondence between businesses than ever before. You must develop good writing skills because you will be amazed how much you have to write upon graduation. None of us like some of the "heavy" reading we do in English classes, but there are lots of fascinating readings out there and you need to establish a consistent pattern of reading in your life, both for work and for pleasure. Get the TV and computer turned off- be an active learner and not a passive watcher!
6. Never give up.
Math is the most challenging subject there is because you can't memorize material, then forget it. You keep building your knowledge base, developing it on previously learned skills. You build a skyscraper one story at a time, and if something is wrong with the previous story, the next story will automatically be wrong, no matter how hard you try to correct it. Similarly, you can't just waste a 9-week grading period in math. You will never recover from it because the next 9 weeks uses all of the previous material in addition to more. Math demands your attention and effort, at all times, to learn all the material, or you can't make it.
This is a great lesson to learn. Work every day and never give up, no matter how tough it might get. Life doesn't start over every nine weeks. Bad decision or lack of effort can cost you for the rest of your life. You can even be fired or sued for those mistakes in our lawyer-saturated society. Math is the one subject that forces you to keep up or risk failure. But remember, "failure is never fatal, and success is never final." You can learn from your mistakes and failures as long as you correct your mistakes and learn what was intended in the start. Meanwhile, you can't rest on past achievement. There is something new to learn every day, both in the classroom and in life.
7. Attitude is everything.
Very few people love math. And yet, despite our dislike of math, most students love Mr. Wilson's calculus class. The reason? It's possible to keep a positive attitude in the face of adversity. It's possible to enjoy hard work. Life will be filled with difficulties and circumstances you can't control. But, you CAN control your reaction to those situations. Patience, perseverance, short and long-term goal-setting, and a positive attitude will overcome just about anything in life, whether it be calculus, finances, relationships, or disease. There are lumps in your oatmeal, lumps in your throat, and (God forbid) lumps in your body from cancer. Learn which lumps are which in life and don't overreact to the little things. Keep a positive attitude about all of it, or life will be nothing but misery for you. Some of the happiest people in this world have nothing, and some of the most miserable people have an abundance of "things." It is simply a matter of how you react to the "lumps in your oatmeal."
In conclusion, Mr. Wilson's class was about far more than just teaching us mathematics. He demonstrated the building blocks of life on a daily basis by the examples he set and the teaching styles he used. Some of us learned through our successes, some of us learned through our failures, but we all grew as individuals in room 106 that year.
