Since we are on this "favorites" kick, I thought that we could find out what subject you were most interested in while you were in school. Also tell us, how this favorite has affected your life today.

Overall, I truly loved everything about school! I loved to read, but didn't care for Reading classes, too many silly questions for me, all that comparing and contrasting... I have always had an easy time with Math and thought Algebra was like a big puzzle to solve. My favorite subjects in High School were any Science classes. I loved Biology, Physical Science, Chemistry, and Physics.

I think I especially loved Science because it was the perfect combination of reading and math. I was blessed with some great HS science teachers, and my college professors were absolutely inspiring. They were so excited about their fields, that it made you excited too! I couldn't wait to get to class, and made science my primary area of study in college.

How has this affected my life today? I do income taxes! Mostly because the math is easy, I don't mind reading all the IRS "stuff", and I like having people come to me.

I would like to go back to college soon, and finish my degree. I put it on hold while the kids were little, but I am starting to feel like I could do it again, since they are getting older. I would like to teach Science. This has always been my intent and dream in life. I would love to inspire young people, the same way many teachers inspired me! Really everything around us is explained by Science...

-- Melissa (cmnorris@1st.net), November 13, 2001

Answers

I love ART, its all about feeling and colour and expression. ANd in class, things are usually the opposite, things have to be a certain way, your lines have to be correct. But put some paint on my hands and i'll have fun fun fun. Then theres English, AHH the written word. DOST IT NOT enlighten the cloudy minded?! =) And i like multimedia, learning to make websites, use cameras, tape sound, etc. Its really facinating. Hmm. Anything thats hands on, I LIKE IT.

-- jillian (sweetunes483@yahoo.com), November 13, 2001.

History,

I have enjoyed it ever since a teacher in high school taught it the way it should be taught. He told us things about history that made it interesting. It was not just the "facts" that were in the book, but it was the little things that made those facts relevant and interesting. They were the little sidelines to history that only someone who really enjoyed history would know and share. His enthusiasm for the subject was memorable. To this day I still enjoy history. Thank you Mr. Adickes wherever you are.

Talk to you later.

-- Bob in WI (bjwick@hotmail.com), November 13, 2001.

History!!!!! Loved it..ate it up..hated anything to do with science which is why I had a science/nursing/medicine career LOL...I read all the material I can get my hands on regarding history..used to spend all my free time in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as a teen ager because they had a history timeline exhibit..you could walk through the Egyptian age into the Roman age and on and on..it was marvelous..for years, husband and I did Civil War re-enacting and have quite an extensive collection of muskets, letters, photographs, etc. We can sit and discuss history for hours.

-- lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), November 13, 2001.

Latin, it was my best subject. Don't know if it's helped a whole lot in life, maybe it's helped me become an excellent Scrabble player.

-- Cindy (S.E.IN) (atilrthehony@countrylife.net), November 14, 2001.

Spanish was my favorite. Anything to do with language. I failed history in college. Now I enjoy history because my husband loves it and explains it so well.

-- Jo (mamamia2kids@msn.com), November 14, 2001.

Geography. I can still whip everybody around in Trivial Pursuit in the subject. Reckon that's why I wound up in Brazil?

I liked 10th grade English. Mrs. Dowler was a mean, demanding grammarian, and much of my capacity today I owe to her.

My coach taught history because he had to. I think I knew more about it than he. Only recently have I enjoyed its study.

-- Randal (randal@rhyme.cjb.net), November 14, 2001.

Randal, I had to laugh out loud at your assessment of your English teacher. No offense to anyone who teaches English, but truly every English teacher I ever had was like that!! According to my children in school, they still are. They take their subject very seriously!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), November 14, 2001.

I love history and science. History was boring in highschool.We seemed to get stuck on the government but now, I love to read about history. Science is another of my favorites, but only Animal Science.In college I found this very interesting and I have learned a lot.I also loved my reading group on high school. I reciently went back into one of my junior high classrooms to see the teacher who's still teaching, and my name was on the reading board. Talk about a shock. I haven't been near that building in over 15 years!! I still hold the record of books read in a school year-639. Do kids not read any more? Any way History takes first.

-- Micheale from SE Kansas (mbfrye@totelcsi.net), November 14, 2001.

Spelling was my best subject; I can empathize with the sentiment in the recent SPELLING post.

I loved (still do) history, which is probably why there are more biographies and historical fiction on the children's bookshelves.

Reading was also a favourite, but I hated doing book reports and summaries.

I think I'll look for "The Scottish Chiefs" next time we go to the library.

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), November 14, 2001.

Melissa, I think English teachers have as their Mission in Life the Proper Instruction of the Mother Tongue. A few years back I wrote a tribute to her in the local paper where I grew up. Another teacher lady took me to task in a letter to the editor for my "criticism" of her. She missed my whole point and made me look the bad guy. *Sigh* Mrs. Dowler had this habit of twirling a rubber band around her wrist while she taught. Most kids didn't like her, but her love for the subject and strictness inspired me to work hard for her.

-- Randal (randal@rhyme.cjb.net), November 14, 2001.

English!! I love it! I, too, am thinking about going back to school to teach - High School English! I have a bachelors in Business, but there is no way you would get me to teach business in school. Period. Ever. Well, okay, maybe if I was starving and needed to feed my children, but thank God I am not! I want to get my master's in English and then take the teaching certification test; hubby is really pushing for this, I think he is ready to let up on the part- time work and just be a fireman for awhile. I don't blame him, it's kind of short trying to support a family of four on one salary! Anyway, I have always loved English, especially the literature focus, and actually won awards at scholastic competitions when I was in high school, where I had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Marshall, who was as mean as you could be to someone who was taller than you (I think she was about 5'3" in heels!) You should have seen her trying to chew out the basketball players! There was also an English teacher in college who I really enjoyed. She was much more formal, calling us all Mr.---- and Miss----, but she was very knowledgable and I purposely enrolled in her grammar classes later (I have a minor in English also).

-- Christine in OK (cljford@aol.com), November 14, 2001.

My very favorite was art. Twas the only subject I ever got any awards in. I think being creative gives a person the ability to Really look. It's hard to explain, but I always notice color. Not just is it blue, but what shade, what shade of the shade, the brightness. My husband always says that I could match a shade of some color out of a thousand choices. Poor guy, he's color blind. I also loved poetry. And Ecology and Conservation--mostly because we roamed along fields and streams and woods, and had to keep a nature notebook, which of course was just another excuse for me to draw or paint.

-- vicki in NW OH (thga76@aol.com), November 15, 2001.