My name is John, and I am currently a freshman student at Tusculum University. My current area of study is undecided with my interest focused on the realms of business, science, and history.
My hometown is a perfect example of the small-town South, with me being born and raised in Tennessee. My schooling started out as private until 2nd grade, with me then being sent through four different public schools over my next four grades and finally settling into one public school that would see me through a steady eight years of the same friends and teachers.
My education has been largely situated around two things, making teachers happy and learning the rules of academics. This first point has taken a different outlook in the variety of different classes I have had, most significantly within English classes. I learned not to pursue my own writing style, which was inspired by the large amounts of books I constantly read as a child, but more to adapt to what each teacher wanted to see. I consistently found that this would lead to higher scores within my classes, even if myself and those I had proofread my writing had a higher view of my own personal writing rather than my work adjusted to the teacher’s preference.
A similar fate can be seen within my experience with standardized testing, most prominently the ACT. I took my first ACT as a sophomore, a year earlier than any of my peers. My first score was relatively high compared to many of my fellow students. Over the next two years, I took the ACT six more times, improving by a total of 2 points and never dropping underneath my original score (Ask me in person for the full story on this). In the course of improving my score, I took numerous ACT practice tests, took an ACT prep class, attended school-hosted ACT camps, and worked with a tutor. Out of every single part of this instruction, all of them taught similar things: how to take the ACT.
This included: different types of questions, how to identify them and how to most quickly and effectively answer them; which questions to skip over; the best ways to skim a passage as fast as possible; which answers to guess if one ran out of time. All of the courses I took taught this to varying degrees, something that I took to heart and dedicated myself to learning.
While many people seem to view this as a negative factor of testing, I view it in a useful and practical, if not overly humanistic, light.
An example of this can be found within the modern workplace, where not everything is focused just on the skills and knowledge you possess, but on what your boss wants and how capable you are of providing that want. Even if this is outside of your training or knowledge, your job as an employee is to make yourself valuable and figure out how to make your task happen. My studying of how to take the ACT taught me skills that will transition perfectly into my workplace. I was not learning about the knowledge or academics that made up the questions on the ACT, I was learning how to answer them in order to get the highest end-result.
Due to this line of thinking, I do not view my intensive study of the ACT as wasted or useless. My work earned me results, and those results earned me acceptance and rewards in the scope of college and scholarships.
