Studying has always been a challenge for me. I didn't have to do it at all until college, when the shock felt like a slap in the face - "you mean I have to TAKE STUFF HOME AND DO IT THERE???" Learning came so effortlessly for me that I really felt I didn't learn anything from my classes for the first ten years or so of school. Thus, I didn't learn good study habits young, and I often believe that if something doesn't come easily, I won't get it at all so I shouldn't bother to try.
This has led to amazed pride in Sarah, as she works hard at her Ridgewater College studies and succeeds. Michelle and David, like me, didn't have to study; Joel and Daniel chose to play instead of study. But Sarah struggles and tries and strives until she figures it out. She'll ask for help, too. Though she can't get an A without effort, nevertheless she gets As. It's great!
I haven't done very well at teaching good study skills or habits to the kids in home school, for the above reasons. So when Andrew took an Accuplacer practice test and failed, I wasn't sure what to do. The Accuplacer test is used by Ridgewater to determine whether a student can take college-level courses. All of our kids have had no problem qualifying in the reading and writing areas, so they can take most classes. But all have struggled with the math portion, and I've heard that many more students fail than pass. In fact, an algebra tutor at another college came here and failed the placement for college-level math!
I believed that Andrew had learned enough math to cope with a college course, but he wasn't able to demonstrate it on the practice test. He kept asking me for help on various problems. Finally, after three weeks of figuring different problems on different practice tests, we realized that he should do multiple problems of the same type at the same time, to cement the proper method in his mind. After about a week of this, he quit asking me for help. Last Friday he took the test - and qualified! That will save him hundreds of dollars in remedial courses, and teaches me a valuable lesson about studying: it works!
