I HATE three day weekends and, by extension, four day weeks. I know what you might be thinking, What? Hate three day weekends? Sanders you're nuts. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. The point is that I hate them so much for a valid reason, they mess with my head so much and it takes me about a week to two weeks to get back to normal. And on top of that, I get back to school and I'm trying to remember everything we were doing before the three day weekend, while praying that I didn't forget to do anything. Time during the long weekend just sort of goes by and I don't really know what's going on or what day it is. Usually, I'll think Monday is Sunday or something. It's almost like time ceases to exist for me. We just came back from a three day weekend this week so we only have four days of school this week. I'm annoyed because I was just getting a grip on time again from the last three day weekend (which was a month ago but feels like it was three weeks), only to have this one sprung on me and now I'm just trying to regain my footing. Yesterday, for the first hour I was up and conscious enough to process things, I literally kept telling myself, "Today is Monday not Sunday." Then of course today, I was trying to remind myself that it was Tuesday, but for whatever reason, first period felt like freaking Saturday, then at one point during transition it felt like Friday. So yeah, days of the week on shuffle. The goal of this week is to stay grounded and in this reality, not sure how well it will work out though.
So that's my vendetta against three day weekends and four day weeks, the Hail Mary's are another story. Whenever I come back from a long weekend, I always spend that first day freaking out and hoping I didn't forget to do anything or get called on to answer a question (because I can't remember what the heck we were doing before the end of last week). Most of the time, everything goes by without much of a hitch. While I don't follow football or know anything about football, I've managed to pick up a football term, Hail Mary. A Hail Mary is a very long, typically unsuccessful pass made in a desperate attempt to score late in the game, an attempt with a small chance of success. For me, a Hail Mary can be that attempt against all odds or something that will save my butt for the time being. Today was just a bunch of Hail Mary's. First period, we were discussing Life of Pi and I was sitting there going "please don't call on me, please don't call on me" because I still have yet to finish the damn book (doing that tonight, I'm dead set on doing that tonight). Anyway, I manage to get through class without much falter, so saving face. Of course I also had a quiz in Econ that I was racking my brain trying to remember what we were doing, I managed to get a 90 something after clicking through questions and debating on whether I should turn the thing in or not. I managed to finish a Lit assignment before the dropbox closed. And the big one, I forgot about the math quiz I have to make up, so I ask my teacher if I'm taking it today, she told me I'll take it tomorrow. I went to my seat, telling myself, "Thank the lord." So yeah, a Hail Mary, something that goes in your favor when it's as least expected as it could get. That's my story, and now to go do work. Sanders out.
Your posts honestly make my day. :D I, on the other hand, am in love with three day weekends. All weekends should be three days (though four day weekends won't hurt either). And hopefully, you've finished the book by now.
ReplyDeleteThree day weekends make me so happy. There's so much more time to get stuff done and I feel like I can spread things around more. But I completely agree that I've been thrown off my game with trying to remember everything we learned the week before. And you have finished Life of Pi by now haven't you?
ReplyDeleteI have a theory of my own called memory truncation. I came up with it wile programming because in coding. If you have a decimal and you do an operation with a whole number, say adding 12.56 with 5, then the compiler (a background program that is the "spell and grammar check" of programming, makes sure you write things correctly) will assume you want less precision and ignore .56 in the operation, giving you an answer of 17 instead of 17.56. That's how I understand truncation (why I explained it like this will come later).
ReplyDeleteFor me, school goes by really fast. Most teachers expect us to keep what we learn in long term memory (or more understanding instructors encourage us to). Remembering my time in elementary and most classes in middle school, there wasn't much continuation in subjects. For example, for some time you might be first learning what SOHCAHTOA finally meant and what it was used for. You learn about how to use them, and immediately after a test you move on to something remotely different. What happened to all of the stuff about finding the lengths of missing sides in triangles and the SOHCAHTOA rule? I'm not saying that this is how the school system is structured or this is how people learn, but it was like that for me.
I'm not the fastest learner, so these things take time for me to understand them, and by the time I do, we've already moved on to something different. So most of the time when a test comes, I just cram my way through it, which (for all of you AP Psych lads out there) means most of the info is stored in short term memory.
Here's the kicker. Think of the decimal .56 as short term memory and the whole numbers 12 and 5 as long term memory. When I learn, I have some whole number of topics sticking with me, but there are some things I didn't fully get to understand yet (the .56). When learning something new, my brain just decides to ignore the .56 to keep up. This along with the usual "Use it or lose it" business is what I call memory truncation. And let me tell you this happens ALL the time. I can't even remember the specifics of what I did YESTERDAY. Hopefully this made sense.