April 11, 2021

I finished teaching my first full series of high school Physics, semesters A and B, Newtonian through Modern Physics. I took Physics in high school. Our teacher was the track coach and through the second half of the semester he was gone a lot, in the hall talking with the assistant track coach next door. We did some cool stuff with Newtonian Physics. We had a lab where we had to calculate where a ball bearing would land, after it went down a ramp and out a second-story window. Kinematics and math worked, it turned out. You could actually predict where that sucker was going to hit the ground. Amazing. 

In college, I did really well in Newtonian Physics (semester A stuff in high school terms). Force, momentum, free body diagrams. All that was no problem. When we got into Thermodynamics and Electricity and Magnetism (especially), I struggled. I chalked it up to me using visualization when I solve problems. Figuring stuff I couldn't see in my mind was harder to solve for me. I took my success and failures to be intrinsic to my in-built talents and proclivities. 

But, now that I'm teaching high school physics, I realize what all should have been on the curriculum back when I was in school. I've noticed that in my high school, we spent most of our time on Newtonian Physics -- and lo and behold, I did well on Newtonian Physics in college. In high school, we didn't cover Electronics at all (Ohm's Law, Kirchoff's Laws, etc.). In my college Electronics class, I struggled. 

I'm not trying to say my struggles in college were a direct result of my high school teacher's omissions. Actually... maybe I am saying that. My point being that having a good foundation ahead of time -- having seen the stuff before -- really helped me out later on. And instead of putting that together, I assumed everything was up to my innate abilities. I figured it was all just feedback on how smart I was or wasn't. 

My takeaway from this realization is to try to stop thinking everything's saying something specific about me. If I take a class or participate in an activity, and I feel like I'm struggling while the people around me are not, instead of concluding "I'm bad at this," I should allow for the possibility that others have had more experience than me, prior training.  

Lastly, as I kick around the idea of going back to school to get an MFA, I've decided to take some community college classes first. Both to help me figure out if film making is actually what I want to be doing, and also to maybe give me a leg up if/when I get into a program.