"How or where am I ever going to need this in real life?"

"How" or "where am I ever going to need this in real life?" is the question most teenage students ask their high school teachers when in a math class or language class. The truth is, we're not going to walk down the steets of a city and in our minds measure that the angles of a triangular building measure up to 180 degrees, or wonder what theory relates to the force that causes a passenger in a taxi cab to fall forward when a driver slams on the breaks when the light turns red. My junior year math teacher actually admitted that the only time I would need the things I learned in his class was for the midterm and final exams, calculus in college, and if I were to be a mathemetician or math teacher. It's my last year in high school, and because of my junior year teacher's answer and my wide span of class choices this year, I no longer ponder or waste time with that question, "when will I need this," because I believe I found the link to it all.

I think that for a long time, students have been taking classes that just aren't interesting, or which they have no interest in. Maybe I'm starting to see this because I chose to take courses I actually enjoy this year. Calculus, physical education, advanced placement biology, government and politics, sociology, world literature, forensic science, and global information system are my senior year classes. The only requirement is world literature and physical education. Caclulus is only needed to measure skill and abilitiy to perform and problem solve. That's math and it's purpose. Biology was a class I chose to take as an elective this year because it's something I have passion for and enjoy hearing about. It's life. "We are life," is what my honors biology teacher used to persuade me to take the class. Everyday, what captures me the most is not the book or slideshow lectures, but the tidbits of advancements in biotechnology, or relationship of biology to daily life that draw me in. With government and politics, with sociology, and with forensic science, I find that things I don't expect to come up, appear in my everyday whereabouts. Of course, politics is in the media today due to the elections, however forensic science comes into pla with current events like the new OJ Simpson trial for which he was not aquitted. Sociology, like biology, is life. It's everyday, everywhere, in everyone. It's cliques, people, feelings, emotions, actions, movement and stillness in a society.

I find that when you have advanced to a certain extent, you find your own way to make connections of the things you learn to the things around you. When you take interest in something, if youmake use of that passion and that energy in your mind that hungers for knowledge, in a way you feed your brain. And it's not just pizza and buffalo wings you're feeding it, it's like the Olive Garden or the Cheesecake Factory for your mind.