Subjects You Wish You'd Studied

[Antepli Ejderha]

Languages, I wish I'd studied one at university.

[Jah Womble]

Biology - despite being fairly poor at the sciences, I'd have nailed that at 'o' level. Options. however, meant that I could only take two of German, biology and art. I wanted to go to art school and was pretty much guaranteed a grade 'A' there, plus enjoyed languages - so biology took the bullet. Most annoying.

[Hot Pepsi]

I wish I could do just about all of them, really. I can't do languages at all. I don't know much about computers. I'm not very handy with tools, etc - although I would probably be better at it if I owned a garage and/or workshop and could practice. I'd like to do something artistic and be better at music.

But I can't say I regret too much of what I did study and I think if I'd studied something more practical than philosophy and religion then my mental health would have deteriorated and I would have maybe killed myself in the 20s. So I wouldn't want to go back and redo my education much differently - a class here and there, of course, but that's inevitable - even though it has left me without a lot of skills valued by the market.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I think Franz Kafka observed that most people do what they're second best at. I suppose that applies to study too. I'd probably have been a more natural writer than visual artist but, though no one said so until my Dad when he was about eighty, the latter was kind of "the family business." His father was a spare-time painter, his mother did superb needlework, he was an architect, I a graphic designer, my son an artist/illustrator. I was OK at it. I've always possessed the conceptual skills, but lacked the craft. At this point I'm more comfortable discussing visual communication than making objects, though photography is still a love, if not quite the passion it once was. Poetry is the thing. I don't really understand it yet, but I want to and will try hard with whatever time is left.

[ad hoc]

Like HP there's so much I wish I could go back and study (and also go back and re-study. But I don't really have any massive regrets. I used to wish that I had studied history more (I didn't even do O level) but to be honest as an adult I can delve into the history that interests me at any given time rather than something dictated by a curriculum. So it's all good

[Lang Spoon]

History for me as well. Couldn’t do it past 13 cos it timetable clashed with “Modern Studies”.

[slackster]

Me too. Was forced to drop History in fourth form (year 10). Had to choose 4 from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography and History for my O Level year. The sciences were a given as at that point I was thinking of going to Medical School, and I was a shoe-in A Grade Geog. student.

But I guess it’s the topic I’ve chosen to dedicate independent ad-hoc (ahem) “study” time on since then just because I’m curious. Maybe wouldn’t have done that if I’d continued it academically.

[Hot Pepsi]

Really, the problem for me - and I suspect many many people - wasn't what I studied but how I studied. I'm bitter that nobody ever taught me - or anyone I know - how to learn stuff for a course and retain the information for tests. So often students are told that their academic struggles - and the mental health problems that come with that - are some kind of moral or spiritual failing. But very often, the problem is that they just don't know the techniques to learn and retain information, how to plan and execute a paper, how to practice math, etc. I had to figure that shit out by myself through trial and error - lots and lots of error. I'm just smart enough to be the dumbest person in a room full of smart people so I could bluff my way through high school but college was hard and I needed more guidance than was available.

And my high school was actually better than most on this score. We focused a lot on writing rather than just reading more books, but in science, math, and languages, the emphasis was too much on "covering the material" rather than learning how to learn that kind of stuff. It would have served me a lot better to do more of the latter and then have to catch-up a bit on downloading the actual information. There were "study skills" things available in college, but they tended to be very prescriptive and one-size-fits all and therefore not that helpful. These days, I'd probably be diagnosed with ADD. I'm not sure that would have been helpful.

I know "learning styles" is a bit of a fad and possibly bullshit, but I'm sure there's something to that and whatever that something is needs to be sorted out in school. I'm certainly confident that education would work a million times better if every kid spent a few hours a week just talking to somebody who does, for lack of a better term, "metaeducation" and can help people figure out how to study more effectively. That would certainly be way more useful than fucking phys ed class or trying to cram in more raw data into kids heads so they'll be ahead of the other kids with anxious parents at a college full of kids with anxious parents. If taking some time to work on one's approach to learning that means that less actual "material" is covered then so be it. What is the damn rush? So you take calculus when you're 19 instead of 17 (or use another relevant example). Why do we force kids to be in such a hurry? What's the benefit?

The approach in my day was to just berate us with "you just need to buckle-down and try harder." And I think that's still pretty typical. That's the equivalent of coaching baseball by just repeatedly saying "only swing at pitches in the strike zone and then when they come, hit those hard. Ok, good talk"

[Beatle Simon]

I was quite happy with what I studied.

I just wish I tried harder.

[Lang Spoon]

I’ve never been able to study properly. Or rather, I’m bone idle and would just stress and leave exam revision or assignments to the last minute. That’s not fatal to an arts degree thankfully. Thought I’d be more mature and focused doing Law part time a few years back, but no, exact same pattern. By rights I should have failed, but undergrad law is just arts with case names to remember but. Blufftastic.

[WOM]

Yeah, I wish I tried harder. And I wish I hadn't taken 3 (three) novel study courses in the same semester, thereby rushing madly through books that I'd dearly love to have spent time with. I'm also a very slow reader of fiction, so I was doomed from the get-go.

[Hot Pepsi]

I wish I’d spent a lot more time studying instead of being crippled with anxiety about studying. But that’s just how it goes.

[Eggchaser]

Because of staff shortages I wasn't allowed to do my chosen leaving cert subjects i.e history, geography and French and was given my first morning in 5th year to decide which to drop.
Reluctantly I ditched history and took biology (about which I knew little and cared less), I managed to get a scrappy pass in biology rather than the honour I'm sure I'd have got in history, to add to the ones I got in the aforementioned two as well as English.
Not that it really matters, I got a job two months after leaving school, stayed there for 4 years and moved to my current job where I've been for 33 years and not one person has ever asked me about my qualifications.

Speaking of qualifications, I have a new secretary starting when we come back after Christmas (pleasingly, my current secretary is stepping up to be a fee earner in the vulnerable client area) and I notice she has better GCSEs and A-Levels than I managed.

[jdsx]

Yeah I suppose, looking back, I would have liked to do biology, because if there's one thing which interests me, it's genetics (a la Dawkins obvs). Absolutely fascinating subject but I don't have a clue how it works.

Actually, looking back, I should have done more-or-less anything else because I took Latin, Greek [Ancient!] and Music for 'A' level*. Fortunately I've managed to make a career out of the music, otherwise I'd have been f***ed by the age of 18.... although I suppose I could have read PPE....;-)

*This was at a state comprehensive btw

[Aitch]

At my grammar school all exams that interested me were answered by writing essays. At least three pages of foolscap were expected per question and teachers individually, not systematically, taught us how to order and structure a logical answer. Nowadays, I think we just learnt how to pass exams, because, not being particularly smart or intelligent, I got straight As in four subjects at A level.

As for the original question, I wish I had studied marine biology. When asked in junior school what we wanted to be and most kids said "teacher", "policeman", "footballer" and "jockey", I piped up with marine biologist, such was my nine-year-old adoration of Jacques Cousteau. After the lesson the teacher took me to one side and explained that to become a marine biologist I would have to go to university, an unnerving word I had never heard before, and what the town really needed was factory workers.

i truly believe that if kids follow their dreams and lived out their potential, rather than being channeled into becoming administrators and office workers**, they would be a lot happier.

My son went to university at the age of 16 to study computer science; he jacked it in after a year, much to my delight, because it was so boring. He then went to a poly and studied Geo Media and Design (how you present geographical information in various media, everything from traditional paper maps to location-based apps), and, much to my chagrin, dropped it after a year because there was too much geography. He's now about to finish an FE course in corporate video films and loves it. The employment outlook is poor, but if he's going to work for another 40 years, he's got to enjoy the day job.

** Most of the kids at junior's secondary school went on to study international asset management and the like. What the actual fuck!? 17-year-olds!

[Patrick Thistle]

Science at A Level, then Medicine.

I ranted on the private schools thread about how my school fucked me over with its approach to science. Although really I was put off by an ignorant a level teacher who told me I'd struggle unless I'd done 3 sciences. One of my friends went on and became a doctor so it didn't stop her.

And yeah, maybe if I'd been determined to do it anyway I could have done it anyway but I had undiagnosed depression as a teen and frankly it's amazing I got any a levels.

[San Bernardhinault]

I just wish I cared when I had the opportunity to study languages, but I was lazy and apathetic. If I'd studied them longer, I'd still have been lazy and apathetic and not learned much.

I think I'd actually have been engaged if I was studying history or stats, which are the two obvious ones.

And right now I wish I'd learned plumbing...

[Sam]

I'd have probably preferred to ditch Drama at AS Level and take History on to full A Level (my year was the first to do AS Levels), but it's not really a regret. When I was younger I wished I'd been allowed to study Spanish at secondary school, but now I speak it fluently without ever having taken a class in it, so it's not as if I'm missing out on that qualification.

What I really wish, at the moment, is that I'd taken the proofreading qualification I finished in February five or ten years earlier. I certainly thought about doing one for long enough. I'd love to be further along this career by now, and it would have been a hell of a lot more useful to do than writing about Argentine football has been.