What Goes Around, Comes Around

My parents used to say, “If you live long enough, you’ll see everything”. Those words came back to me as I was helping my son student for a test about colonial times. One thing which he has to be able to do is identify the original 13 colonies on the map. I was helping he do this.

I am pleased to say I was able to help him. When I was in Junior High School, I hated map skills. My father spent hours with me going over the map and telling me it was pure memorization, it was simply a matter of how strong the muscles were in my backside. That was what was going to get me to pass the test.

I did pass the test although it wasn’t until I was 18 years old that I could look at a map and determine that in order to get from New York to Florida, one had to go south. Nowadays I can look at an unlabeled map of the United States and identify at least 45 states and probably all 50. Don’t give me a world map or a map of another country, please!

It honestly was quite a thrill to be able to help my son with map skills and unfortunately I was not able to pick up the phone, call my dad and say, “Guess what”. He would have gotten a laugh and a thrill over it.

I do think there is an important lesson here. Dad was right. Sometimes doing well in school, on a test, in a class, is directly proportionate to your ability to sit still and stay focused. I realize that is often times easier said than done. Still, students who actually take notes, read the textbook and have the discipline to review the information on a regular basis, not just before a test, tend to do better in classes. That is true, I think, on any level.