The Awakening

Nigel did a bit better in his most recent exams – and in fact, he got a GPA 4.0 on his History! For the first time in history! That’s actually not true, it’s for the first time this year. A GPA of 4 means he got at least 75%, which is not too bad.

Nigel doing some work on the PC while listening to Spotify

For many years now I’ve been asking Nigel to take notes while studying – especially for subjects like History and Literature where he tends to read his textbooks like storybooks, sometimes even reclining on his bed with a pillow under his head (I’m imaging even with a beer in his hand if he met the age criteria). His main gripe against taking notes is “why would I waste time copying out things which are already in the book”. It’s hard to argue against that and I didn’t really have a good comeback except to say that when you write, the words go deeper into your brain. Is that the true? Would it also be a valid statement for typing? I sometimes type emails to people, hit the “send” button and proceed to immediately forget what the contents of the email were – but that’s a different story and I’m more than 30 years older than Nigel anyway.

So when I asked him what he did differently this time to improve his History, I was surprised to hear his response. “I wrote down notes,” he said. I tried hard to figure out how to pronounce a bunch of exclamation marks and special characters like !$#%@^%&*! but nothing meaningful came out. Looks like he’s beginning to learn how to learn. Fingers and toes crossed.