So, it’s a new homeschooling year. Some of you have already started. Others, like me, wait for September. Regardless, we all start the new school year with mixed feelings, don’t we?
Somewhere, mixed in with excitement and confidence, there are some fears. Maybe you don’t like a particular subject. Maybe you don’t know much about a subject.
As for me, I have a weird relationship with science. It does not inspire me. I made good grades in science. I even majored in Math and Physics in high school (they have majors in high school where I come from), but I didn’t get excited about it. It’s a long story how I ended up majoring in real sciences when my heart was really on foreign languages and literature.
Anyhow, now I homeschool. What to do about science? I decided to take the bull by the horn and get to know more about the poster boy of modern science – Albert Einstein.
Maybe, just maybe, by reading Walter Isaacson’s 500-page biography on Einstein, I will get the right dose of excitement about science. I’m only in the first 100 pages, but I have learned that Einstein flunked a Physics course at the Zurich Polytechnic.
There’s hope for the rest of us, right?
OK, so I have not told you everything. Einstein did not flunk Physics because he did not know the subject matter. He flunked it because he did not go to the lectures very often. He did not like that particular professor that much, either. So Einstein got a 1 out of 6 – a failing grade. He had to re-take the class.
Just in case you, too, have a love-hate relationship with science (or any other subject for that matter), I suggest you take the bull by the horn. Find something that might get you interested in it – from a different angle. Unless, of course, you want to delegate it to a co-op tutor or an online teacher. That works, too.
