Stand and Deliver.

AP Calc test is tomorrow; I've been eschewing the (multiple) study parties, review sessions, and morale-boosting pizza-movie nights, despite the tempting allure of extra credit (and, well, pizza), pleading that I learn best alone. And by alone, I mean hardcore alone: solitary confinement in my room, papers and notebooks strewn about, four hours of problems and throwing practice tests at the walls as my scores get successively lower.

"I study best alone," I tell people, when they invite me to such studying soirées. It's half a truth, at best. I have no idea how I learn most effectively; whether these cram-sessions make any difference; whether it's sitting in class talking about the upcoming Harry Potter movie that subconsciously deposits information; whether I should consider sleeping on my books and letting it osmosize into my brain.

(My sister commented, at this, that unless there's water and a semipermeable membrane involved, nothing can osmosize at all. If it's something else, I should say diffusion.

Well, osmosize isn't a word anyway, I retorted brilliantly. I may or may not have stuck out my tongue.)

Tonight, though, after staying home to study all day, my ability to learn and retain is reaching a limit even as time t approaches infinity; so I thought, why not? And thus I sauntered over to the Calc Tune-Up study session at Borders.

That's only half a truth, as well. I went because (1) I needed to give Louise flashcards and a practice book I had sitting around; (2) I needed to get from Ashley my notes; (3) I needed to purchase a physics book for this weekend's cram-fest--and for summer study, embarrassingly enough; and (4) I wanted Mr. Guzik to answer a couple questions I had regarding intractable problems on the practice test.

Here is how that went:
(1) Check.
(2) No check, she left them at home--she offered to swing by but I told her no biggie, I probably had studied as much as humanly possible anyway.
(3) Check. I had a choice between a thin one and a thick one. I took the thick one, because I am a masochist.
(4) No check. Haha, he had no idea either--well, that's unkind of me, he had no idea on two, he helped me on one, and I figured out the other while explaining to him what I didn't understand.

But that is sort of beside the point, anyway; that's only half the reason I went. I sort of...wanted to see. If I actually did learn best solo.

They told us, at Caltech (and at everywhere else) that the first thing you do, if you don't want to die, is form a study group. Find people, get together, and put your collective mind to work on those hellish problem sets the teachers apparently dish out so cheerfully. Sometimes there's one genius kid who can do it on their own, the Caltechers said, but for the rest of us mortals we need help. I know I'm not a genius, and I certainly won't be anything close to a genius there, so no fear of that anomaly.

This made me sort of afraid. I've done things in groups, before, but I almost never learn anything in a group. We accomplish tasks in groups, do paired projects, edit each others' essays, present lectures together, but we don't...learn together. Or at least I don't. Even when we go places to study together--I feel like I'm talking and explaining and nodding too much and not asking enough questions. I don't want to sound like an ass. I sure as heck don't know everything, and I'm sure I don't know everything better than those in my study groups. I'm just...academically assertive? Bossy, probably. Bossy like Hermione, but without the redeeming ability to remember esoteric facts about Hogwarts history at key moments.

So yeah, I went to this today. To see. It's not an ideal situation to test it out in, really--I'm in BC, everyone else there was in AB. (I took that last year; my test covers that material and some additional stuff). So there weren't really any peers to help me, although man could I have used the help. God, I started forgetting trigonometric identities. You know you're bad off...

Anyway. I went. And you know what? It might just work.

I went and pulled up a table in the little Borders coffee-section, sat smack in the middle of about 10 kids with whom I have only the barest acquaintance (my closer friends were at a farther table), and just sort of observed. And did some problems of course. And chimed in with a bit of help whenever they needed me (not often, though I offered).

What an odd collection we must have been! Odd and annoying, probably, as our noise got progressively noisier. Ten people, all talking over and around and with each other, in numbers. Snatches, half a problem here, half a problem there; cutting in with a "No no no, d/dx [lnu] is u' / u...;" hoots of triumph at reaching a solution; groans of despair at comparing answers and not matching; anxious, wry comments about the upcoming test.

Yeah, I learned something. No, it wasn't math (although I did figure out what I was doing wrong in a couple of cases; thanks, Mr. Guzik.). I figured out that with the right circumstances, a motivated and bright group of people, everybody bringing something to the table, free samples of apple pie, and a bloody lot of scratch paper, it could work. It could really work for me. God, it's too bad I didn't go last year, or too bad I'm not in AB this year, or too bad more kids don't take BC, or something.

(It's always something like that. I'm like the only one I know of taking physics, so that'll be a lonely party no matter what. For government, Louise and I did a rapid-fire back-and-forth Q-and-A over the computer, but you know--the internet, right there, so tempting...haha.)

But, in any case, it reassures me. A lot. College is going to be so much harder that this, and this is already so hard. I feel sometimes like nothing is done in class and the homework teaches me nothing and it's just me, really, and the material to be learned, and what's wrong with me that I can't just learn it? Sometimes. Well, calculus is like that sorta all the time because it is just me, in essence.

I don't mean to mope. I found out something important and heartening today and I'm happy. Even if I have an AP test tomorrow, haha.

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42 points if you catch this entry's title reference.