Top Five Things I Want to Learn Before College Starts

I have less than four months left of my year off. There’s so much to do, but once college starts, I’ll have so little time! I figured I’d just try to learn as much as I can, but thanks to the Problogger Group Writing Project, I got the idea to narrow it down to five things. (And in doing so, I have a chance to win $1001! Is that a good deal or what?)

So, these are the five things I will definitely learn in the next four months:

  1. Mental arithmetic - I’m terrible at arithmetic. I did well in calculus, but I had to use my huge scientific calculator to find out what 6 times 7 is. Hey, I have an excuse! I was sick when my third grade teacher taught the multiplication tables. :(
  2. Spanish - Not just because I want to, but because I’m hoping I can re-learn enough Spanish to fulfill my foreign language requirement just by taking a test.
  3. JavaScript - I’ll keep learning more about PHP, of course, but I want to learn another programming language soon. I see lots of cool little JavaScript widgets and stuff all over the place, so I figure it’d be fun to learn.
  4. Writing - Yes, I know how to write. Sometimes I can even be good at it, but I’ve gotten pretty rusty. When was the last time I wrote an essay? A short story? A poem? It’s been so long, I feel like I don’t even know how! I need to exercise my writing hand/typing hands so that they won’t be totally out of shape when I’m back at school.
  5. CSS Layouts - This has been bugging me for far too long! I want to understand exactly how each type of layout works. Why is it so difficult to get things to resize nicely? What’s going on with the whole negative margins thing? Why does Internet Explorer hate me?

Those are my top five, but I still want to learn about drawing, physics, music, French, linguistics, and so many other things! What do you want to learn in the next four months?

Posted on May 8th, 2007 | Leave a comment | Trackback URL

47 Comments

  1. Kim Roach

    May 9th, 2007

    Excellent article! I am with you on the writing part. That is something I am always looking to get better at. By the way, what are you going to be majoring in at college?

    Take Care,

    Kim

  2. Annie

    May 9th, 2007

    Great post! I think from the looks of it you will be in great shape when you start college. Good luck to you!

    The Superfast Reader

  3. Eli James

    May 9th, 2007

    Whoah. You know PHP but don’t understand CSS layouts?

    Okay. #5 is going to be the easiest one to accomplish - CSS is VERY easy to understand.

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  6. Sarah

    May 10th, 2007

    Haha! IE hates everybody. Not just you. Congratulations on narrowing it down to five. Try to decide which one you really really reaaaaaaaally wanna learn (and which one takes less time) and focus on that. I suggest either Javascript of CSS layouts, because you seem to have a bit of background on them, plus you’re a blogger so you get to use them and practice on them often. Good luck!

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  8. Robert Hruzek

    May 10th, 2007

    Yep, good list. But don’t forget the most important one - don’t forget to learn to laugh!

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  10. Ray Johnson

    May 10th, 2007

    This is a great post. Since you are a blogger and you have the basic knowledge of the web language I totally understand why you have writing , css , and javascript. maybe you can combine two of them to increase the chances you doing all five.

  11. Conscious

    May 10th, 2007

    Cool. I’m sure you’ll tackle it all.

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  13. Donald Latumahina

    May 10th, 2007

    I agree with you, Internet Explorer “hates” us in term of CSS. I got a lot of problems dealing with IE 6. IE 7 is better though.

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  15. LearningNerd

    May 10th, 2007

    Thanks for the comments!

    Kim - I have absolutely no idea what I want to major in! I have a feeling I’ll never decide. =P

    Eli - Yeah, it is kinda silly. I have a basic understanding of CSS (just enough to design my site), but all the little details about the different browsers and whatnot just give me a headache. I really want to get to a point where I know why those things work the way they do.

  16. Brennan

    May 10th, 2007

    Great Post! I agree with the CSS part, for me personally. I think I have very little chance of learning JS, though. LOL.

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  18. Shawn the screenwriting mofo

    May 10th, 2007

    ooh, sweet site! I need to re-learn my Spanish too.

    Thanks for the comments on my page and for giving me the heads up on scriptfrenzy.
    Drop by anytime!

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  20. splork

    May 10th, 2007

    Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my entry at my blog. These writing projects are actually pretty cool as they give you an opportunity to check out blogs you might have overlooked otherwise.

    I’m a few years out of school, but I sure would like to learn Spanish.

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  22. Steve

    May 10th, 2007

    I agree with you, learning is a challenge and fun at the same time. Any subject that is of interest will be automatically absorbed to be used at a later date. good luck with college.

  23. Ginene

    May 10th, 2007

    Great post. I want to learn how to speak fluent Spanish and Chinese. Good luck on the contest!

  24. Nick

    May 10th, 2007

    Hey, nice post. I planned to learn French this summer, before I got a full time job and into this whole blogging thing haha. But I have my own entry up if you’re interested at luxuryglobetrotting.com

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  40. Adrian

    June 3rd, 2007

    If you need any help with the spanish, I live in Spain and I wouldn’t have any trouble helping you out lol, nice site by the way. Keep it up. Bye.

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  45. Mick

    November 14th, 2007

    I’ve stumbled on this rather late - in fact I wish I found this earlier. I learn to speak Spanish earlier this year, and must say it was the best thing I’ve ever done education wise. Being a bit of a ‘yobbo’ I never really achieved much through school, but you know how they say, you won’t learn anything until you want to. Maybe dreaming of latino women hurried me along ;)

    Good luck with all your goals!

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