What Will You Remember?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I was a junior/senior at good old New Paltz High. Yes, I was a student here long, long ago, and it was my first day as a junior/senior (I graduated in three years). It was September of 1975, and I was starting my last year of high school. I was excited for my junior classes (since I had known most of my fellow classmates since third grade, when I moved to NP from Long Island), but I was a bit nervous about the senior part of my schedule, as I’d be with kids who were a year older, kids I kind-of knew, but not very well. I remember wondering how it would all shake out. Not really worrying, exactly, but…. wondering.

Little did I know that my biggest surprise of that first day (and one of my strongest resulting memories) would occur in U.S. History (a junior-level class) with—you guessed it—Mrs. Clinton as my teacher. I had heard that she was demanding, that I would be challenged by her class, but I wasn’t really worried.I thought I was fairly well-read, so I felt fairly well-prepared.

I shouldn’t have been so confident. Mrs. Clinton shocked my classmates and me when she handed each student a quiz as we walked in the door.

She ignored our whiny responses of “What?” “Huh?” “But we haven’t learned anything yet!” She simply said, “I want to know where we are starting. So do your best.” She smiled ever so slightly, but not enough to encourage further questioning (or whining). We knew she was no-nonsense.

Heads were bent over desks. We read.

I wish I could remember all 20 of the quiz questions, but suffice it to say that they ranged from constitutional amendments to current issues, from “Who wrote the national anthem?” to “Who is Karen Ann Quindlen?” I know I answered some of them correctly, but not nearly enough of them to feel in any way confident that I was well-informed (much less cocky). I do remember, though, that one question had to do with Watergate (which prompted a few of the boys to do Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” impressions), and the last one asked, “Where is Jimmy Hoffa?” (Ask your parents—or Google him—there is an interesting story there!).

Why is this important? And why did it create such a strong memory for me? Well, memories are funny things. So many events and experiences happen to a person over a lifetime, how does the mind select what to remember? I’ve done a bit of reading about this and, if you follow Virginia Woolfe’s theory, our memories are formed when our inner version of reality brushes up against (collides with) actual reality.

Again, huh? What does that mean? Well, Woolfe thought the average human being was divorced from reality, that we each exist in our own separate reality, looking out at the world through our own little perspective, but that there are moments when our inner realities collide with what is actually happening in the real world—and that these moments form our memories.

So, as a sixteen-year-old, I had been fairly confident I knew what was going on in the world. While I didn’t grow up in an academic household (neither of my parents had gone to college), I was a huge reader—so, by comparison, I had felt that my reading habit had kept me up-to-date with current events. I learned on that day that I had a lot to learn. While I was far from the lowest-scoring student in the class, I was nowhere near the top. I learned I better get my study on.

Mrs. Clinton said in class that Newsweek Magazine had a student subscription rate, and she recommended that we get either Time or Newsweek at home. And that we start to read newspapers.

Since I didn’t like to feel ignorant (or anywhere in the uninformed range), I took advantage of that student subscription rate—and, believe it or not, I have subscribed to Newsweek ever since. Here are some of the tasty tidbits I’ve picked up in the last few months. (Yes, this would be my current event quiz for 2010, if I were to give one to my students. Give it a whirl—and scroll down for the answers!):
1. January 4, 2010 issue: Name the top five movies—and TV shows—of the past year (or as many as you can!)
2. February 8, 2010 issue: Americans’ most popular medication is antidepressants. According to top researchers, do antidepressants work?
3. March 22, 2010 issue: Michelle Obama is on a mission to fight the skyrocketing obesity rates in American children (obesity rates have tripled among kids ages 12-19 since 1980)—what is her movement entitled?
4. March 29, 2010 issue: How much did the average American salary increase in the last 30 years (and how much was it then vs. now)?
5. Also in the March 29, 2010 issue, here is a quote (fill in the blank): “Despite earning higher GPAs, one year out of college, young women will already take home just _____ percent of what their male colleagues do.”
6. April 19, 2010 issue: When President Obama was looking for a Supreme Court replacement for the retiring Justice David Souter, what was the main quality he was searching for? (Hint: it wasn’t years on the bench.)
7. April 26, 2010 issue: The first Earth Day was in 1970—has anything improved on our home planet? (Specifically consider acid rain, the ozone layer, endangered species, and energy use.)
8. Also in the April 26, 2010 issue: The State Board of Education of Texas is rewriting history by changing the history books—what has changed?
9. May 10, 2010 issue: Wall Street doesn’t seem to be making any friends, but the Harvard Business School is trying to change the way future businessmen/women view their profession—so they now ask M.B.A. candidates to take the M.B.A. oath. What does it say?
10. May 24 and 31, 2010 issue: The health care debate is still raging. True or false: “Although [Americans] pay the most for our health care, the U.S. has higher rates of preventable deaths than almost all other industrialized nations.”


Answers:
1. Movies: “Transformers 2,” “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” “Up,” “The Hangover,” and “New Moon.”
TV Shows: “American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Sunday Night Football,” “NCIS,” and “The Good Wife.” (Guess I am a loser—I have never watched a full episode of ANY of these shows… and I’ve only seen one of the films, “The Hangover.”)
2. “Only in patients with very severe symptoms was there a clinically meaningful drug benefit.”
3. Let’s move (go to letsmove.gov for tips and info)
4. By 233% since 1981 (from $11,900 to $39,653).
5. 80% (I did not expect this to be true when I was in high school…)
6. According to Newsweek’s Dahlia Lithwick, he “dropped the E bomb” when he said, “ I view the quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”
7. Acid rain has declined (though it is still higher than it should be), the ozone is recovering (a bit), but the number of endangered species has more than quadrupled and energy use hasn’t changed (“despite substantial increases in energy efficiency of homes and appliances”).
8. “Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez were among those on the chopping block, while the inventor of the yo-yo [I’m not making this up] was cheerfully inserted.”
9. “To value ethics as much as they do profits,” since “doing the right thing is always in the long-term interest of share-holders.” Believe it or not, even Harvard agrees that business schools have “gotten worse at teaching ethics.”
10. Sadly, this is true. How can people be proactive about their health? Make sure your doctor knows your interest, that you’d like to remain healthy, or as Dr. Jonathan Finkelstein writes in this Newsweek article, “be sure you make it clear that you also expect him or her to help protect you from things that might bother you tomorrow.”


So here is your challenge—take a look at your junior year, and fully describe what you will remember most—yup, the event/experience that will make your strongest memory--especially considering your personal literacy ...