Year One: An English Major

My whole life I've envisioned myself as a high school teacher. So that's exactly what I went to university to become. One of my favorite classes in high school was Writer's Craft. That, then, is what I wanted to teach. So in September 2010 I started at York University as an English Major.

Now, in the English Department they know that a lot of students are only taking English because they don't know what they really want to do. So while cross-discipline credits are required in every degree, they make you take lots of them in English, in the hopes of getting you out of their oversaturrated department.

Well, it worked.

I took a Natural Sciences course called Light and Sound. I found this class fascinating. I was motivated to work hard, and I left the class with an A+! (One of the only ones I had ever gotten). To this day (5 years later) every time I see Professor Wolfe it brightens my day. None of those statements was true for any of my other classes. I didn't like any of my profs. I was barely interested in any of the material. I was not motivated. And as far as my grades go, let's just say that short of failing, they're still bringing down my GPA.

I used to go to my English classes and (cover your eyes Dad) play games on my laptop at the back of the lecture hall. Hey, I didn't say I wondered why I didn't get better grades.

The Light and Sound class, however, was awesome. It was the only class that held me enraptured nearly each and every lecture. I learned about waves, and laws that govern their behaviour. I learned a little about something called blackbody radiation (a law that, along with other things, tells us about how hot the sun is based on its size and brightness). I did two projects that taught me a lot of fascinating things about the original violins and light data storage (like why a blu-ray disc holds more than a DVD). I came out of this class thinking I was pretty knowledgeable, haha.

So, I decided to switch majors. Afterall, the dream was always to be a teacher. It didn't really matter what the subject was.

But, I had a dilemna. My GPA along with my high school grades were way too low for the Faculty of Science and Engineering to accept me. Also, I didn't have enough high school math or physics to take even their first year courses.

Next post I'll talk about the year and a half I spent building up to even taking "uni-level" physics and math classes (and even calling them that is a bit of a stretch).