Anatomy Alterations by Hallie

Anatomy Alterations by Hallie - September 2017 Scholarship Essay

My junior year I took Anatomy and Physiology Honors. It was one of the most stress inducing classes I have yet to take, this coming from a stereotypical AP kid who thrives under all-nighters. It would not have been so terrible had the teacher not been so emphatic about our way of note taking.
This teacher had strict policies of which style of notes that I had never seen before. I have been met with many obstacles in my time as a high school student but this bullets/numbers/capital letters/lower case letters style of notes as a problem just blew my mind. I just could not understand it.
It was this same class that we had to recopy all of our notes. This was a study style I had been meaning to try for a while I had just never gotten around to trying it. Every single day, all semester, I took notes in class with oral commentary and special notes as quickly as possible and then went home to re-copy them. The recopy had banners and specially shaped bullets and was all sorts of color coded. I was proud of my notes of that class and between reading the hasty messy notes, re writing the notes, and liking the way my notes looked I noticed better recall on almost every test or quiz.
I will be truly honest, I was annoyed and aggravated with that teacher almost beyond compare. I felt like I should have put that time into AP Gov or something and instead it was supposed to be a fun, fairly simple science class I took to get a cord and fill a slot in my schedule. I realized when I was registering for classes in the spring how much I appreciated the seemingly asinine concept of her note style and recopying rules. I signed up for her Zoology class and even though I am facing the same notes stress now I see how much it is helping. I have followed this method of studying for every class since then. It is stressful and exhausting and when I slow down taking my notes I get all worried because I have to make these pretty are they nice enough? But it helps me come test day and I have gotten slightly better at coping with that worry.
Thank you for considering me for this opportunity; I hope that you have a wonderful day,
Hallie Smith.