Geoff's Miscellany

One of my favorite bands is Lovedrug. It’s hard to say when I discovered them, perhaps when I still lived with my parents. I distinctly remember thinking that their purevolume page was super awesome. Anyway, this song off of their second album, which I ordered on half.com and somehow received an advanced copy of, love before my friends got the actual thing is one of my favorites. The singer’s voice takes some getting used to, but the concept in the song is pretty cool. The character is a bit of a white knight kind of guy (showing over much affection to a girl who is not interested), but if you think of it as though things were occurring on a more cosmic or epic scale, then it’s pretty awesome.

If you cannot read for pleasure, start. It can be anything: history, how-to books, philosophy, great literature, popularized science, theology. I recommend a bit of everything. But learn to read for pleasure in the same way one might lift weights for pleasure. That way, even if something feels boring or unpleasant in the moment, it could be good for you when you finish. In order to make time for this you’ll need to watch less television, but it is worth it because reading for pleasure improves your ability to study by increasing certain brain functions that correlate with empathy and problem solving.

Learn to budget. Write a budget and stick to it rigidly. This will save you a lot of trouble in college and in your early thirties when many people are buried under massive debt from their college years while still working in entry level positions with low income.

I mentioned cooking when talking about the morning routine. People often joke about how bad they are at cooking. Do not let them intimidate you. People who say such things are simply admitting that they are bad at following (or more likely refuse to) instructions. Cooking is fun, produces tasty things, and gives you options for dinner. Ask your parents, buy a cookbook, or use internet videos, but cooking is great fun and an important milestone for approaching adulthood.

If your parents do not possess this knowledge, then I recommend using the internet (with their permission) in order to do simple things like check tire pressure, use a compressor, and check fluid levels. If you have other opportunities (perhaps asking a friend’s parent to teach you), then jump at the opportunity. Basic tune ups can save you thousands when you’re older. I also say vehicular, because many young people no longer perform the basics of bicycle repair and upkeep. Regular oiling, tub changes, and tightening are key to safety and efficiency in cycling for exercise and travel.

One of the major problems in high school curricula today is that students are taught to regurgitate so much material, that they rarely ever produce their own knowledge. Learning to program teaches you to problem solve in a way that is hardly analogous to any class except Calculus in high school and gives you opportunities that are able to be pursued even by students who live in apartments without garages or opportunities to do house or automobile repairs themselves.

Your morning responsibilities immediately become your own when you move out. I recommend that you make them your own in high school or earlier. A good morning routine actually starts the previous night, but more on that later. A morning routine will help you in three key ways:

1. Save you time
2. Keep you from having to make choices in the morning when you’re sleepy
3. Prepare you to hit the pavement bright eyed and bushy tailed

Hygiene

Exercise

Attire and accessories

Sustenance

If you do not buy your lunch, then the morning (or the night before) is a good time to prepare your food. Again, preparing your own is cheaper than buying the school lunch (unless you’re on assisted lunches), and if you make your own food you’ll save time for your parents so that they can have a more relaxing morning.

This seems trivial, but it is important. In high school, especially with the advent of social media, the pleasure centers of our brains are so easily stimulated by easy access to people who ‘like,’ ‘favorite,’ respond angrily, or throw flattery our way that we can become addicted to the constant influx of digital love. This same inability to be alone has always existed, but it is not always good. We are a part of the human race, of our family, of our neighborhood, sports teams, classrooms, churches and nation, it is true. But we are also individuals. If we never take time to sit with our thoughts (no music, no people, no media, no book in hand), then it is difficult to recognize our faults, our victories, or even our own soul amidst the noise of the world around us. Learning to sit in silence for a few minutes a day with no agenda but contemplation, prayer, or simply listening to the sounds around you without feeling antsy, lonely, or bored is supremely needed in our era. Learn this in high school, because if you’re media addicted in college and it hurts your grades it will cost you money. And if you’re over social but do not know yourself well enough to make true friends, it will cost you even more.

The Best Skill: Studying

There are thousands of techniques for good study, but only a few simple principles:

1. Personal Study Space
2. Regularity
3. Comprehensiveness
4. Orderliness

Personal Study Space

1. Comfortable enough to sit for extended periods
2. Uncomfortable enough to keep you awake
3. You need to have the right amount of noise (some people need silence to study, others need background noise), so the space should shield you/others from noise (headphones/ear plugs are your friends).
4. It needs to be private enough to protect you from distractions.
5. It needs to be public enough to help you feel embarrassed if you're caught wasting your time.

Important Items include:

1. A desk (I recommend Origami's Folding Desk)
2. An office chair (unless you opt for a standing desk, in which case you want a recliner/rocker for times when you’re reading and wish to sit down)
3. A small filing cabinet for paper work, completed assignments, useful hand outs, and extra supplies
4. A small white board for working out math problems w/out using paper
5. A small book shelf
6. Encouraging artwork or sayings to motivate you.

Regularity

1. You have to repeat things in order to remember them in the short term.
2. You have to remember to repeat things so that you do not lose them in the long term.

To study regularly, I recommend writing your school schedule every Sunday evening so that you will know what time you mean to study for which subjects on which days. Get your parents’ permission for doing this sort of thing (how could they object?) because their permission also means that you have their understanding. This is important because you should never deviate from your study schedule except for emergencies. One of the most awkward binds to be in is when a chore you could do at any time comes up when you planned on studying and because your parents were not alerted in advance and because of this, they feel like you’re avoiding work.

I wrote this guide based on my experiences as an educator and student.

I’ll update this page frequently.

Note: I wrote this from a religious perspective, but I recommend reading it anyway because most of the tips are quite universal and not sugarcoated or based on the self-esteem notion that challenging things are bad because you might fail.

1. Learn to study
2. Learn to be alone without feeling lonely
3. Learn to have a morning routine
4. Learn to write basic computer programs
5. Learn to do basic vehicular repairs and upkeep
6. Learn to cook
7. Learn to budget
8. Learn to read for pleasure