<p>Hey, everyone. I'm a senior finishing up high school and I was wondering something about my thinking/learning style. </p>
<p>I've always received good grades without that much effort in all my classes, though my strengths were math and science. I had straight A's throughout sophomore year, but, last year, when I took AP US History, I discovered I couldn't comprehend a thing from the beginning of that class. To give some more detail, the class was mostly centered around each student creating a binder full of all the information/material following exactly what the teacher wanted you to do. Our binders were full of charts, tables, timelines and other tools that the teacher expected we'd follow by his status quo. We had a strict reading schedule with specific ways to analyze the documents (in preparation for DBQ's, essays, etc.) and we'd follow strict weekly schedules (Monday was multiple choice practice, tuesday was timeline, etc.). Everyday was the same (we'd do the weekly schedule assignment and ask questions on the reading till class was over. Btw, it was always the same small group of students asking questions and no one else) and it was the most boring experience for me ever. Even the way we had to write our essays was formally given to us at the beginning of the year and we HAD TO FOLLOW IT. It was a very strict process of brainstorming, outline, thesis, essay that would be checked at each step. I'm not talking about the AP guidelines, I mean the way we had to prepare to write the essay. (I remember once my history teacher told me to stop using a different approach I was trying at the very beginning of the year.) As I put my binder together as the year progressed, the information simply wasn't sticking to me. My test scores were average/below-average. </p>
<p>I could keep up with the reading and homework perfectly, study my heart out, and still do much worse than my peers who normally look up to me as the one who gets good grades. Everyone (including my teachers and counselor) was confused. And it didn't make sense to say "History isn't your thing" at the time because I found the same problem in multiple-choice AP Literature & Composition at that time too. I thought it must have been something in my thinking style in comprehending factual information. </p>
<p>I ended up with a B+ first semester in AP USH and AP Lit (but second semester, I pulled off an A in both and a 4 on the exams).</p>
<p>Senior year, this has come up again in my AP Social Studies courses (Government, Micro and Macroeconomics) in which I'm doing much worse than all my classmates and falling behind though I keep up with homework and studying much more than a lot of other students do. Keep in mind, I was always doing fine in my other classes.</p>
<p>I started thinking through the courses in which I did well (mostly math and science), and figured, maybe I'm a holistic learner. I couldn't simply read a textbook, take notes, and then understand the information well enough to be tested over it. I wanted to reason through different relationships and solutions to find a "big picture" of all the information I learned instead of simply making "categorized" ways of learning. Maybe (I'm really not sure) my math and science classes understand RELATIONSHIPS whereas history/government/econ focused on OBJECTS. While math and science emphasized experimentation and questioning, my social studies courses just wanted me to read a book and answer questions. Looking back on my AP Social Studies classes (including APUSH), they seem to me ancient and outdated in their learning style. I simply couldn't memorize things following the charts, tables, and guidelines of other people (with the APUSH binder) that compartmentalized everything into simple facts without any application, hands-on learning, or inquiry. Sure, the charts/diagrams/tables try to emphasize relationships, but they built the relationships before we could re-create them ourselves. Sure, we had essays to understand relationships in history, but we had to follow the essay-writing strategy our teacher told us. Sure, we worked in groups in AP USH, but that was only to get through all the tedious busy work. </p>
<p>I've discussed this with my APGovernment/APMicroeconomics teacher who is worried why I wasn't absorbing information like other students were. She understands that everyone has different learning styles and she really knows that I'm going to be successful (in math/science) in the future, so she's not too worried about my social studies grades. I'm also worried this problem of mine will arise in the future in college (where I plan on majoring in chemistry with a pre-med track). Any advice for me? Has anyone been in a similar situation?</p>