In praise of re-learning

I now know why it was a mistake to wait until my senior year to take the physical science requirement. While, way back when, I was more or less able to do basic calculus problems, I now see a simple equation with one or more variables and don't have the slightest idea what to make of it. Scientific notation? I once knew all about that. Now, not so much.

I am also taking beginning Hebrew. In this case, too, I once knew everything that is being taught, but, unlike the 18-year-olds in the class who might have some recollection of what they learned in Hebrew school, the Aleph Bet (Hebrew alphabet) looks like some person I might see on campus and know I knew him from somewhere but not be able to place him. It all comes back to me at times, then a couple days pass, a Hebrew-free weekend, and, again, it's all just pretty letters written backwards once again.

While there's nothing that makes me feel quite as pathetic as having the urge to whine, "I don't get it!" when presented with material I was capable of mastering before I was 10, I'm actually glad, despite the humiliation, to be learning again what I once knew. It is a horrible sensation to realize that all those quizzes I took as a kid, all the schoolwork I did back when my attention span was maybe a bit longer, was just so I could bide my time, that I hadn't really learned anything then. While it's easier to learn a language (or, I suppose, basic algebra) when very young, it doesn't really stick unless you're confronted with it later. Or so I've found.

Enough overanalysis of my homework. Back to, well, doing it...