Purple Haze
Turning circles into squares
By Lauren Bagian

April 2, 2009

Cutting corners, we all do it, especially high school students. The one thing that I realized for the first time this year is that the students who cut the most corners are the students in the upper level classes. It’s not quite what you expected, right? I was surprised too until I realized why this was the case. As I have said countless times before, high school is stressful, especially if the thought of a prestigious college or university is ominously looming right over the horizon. The hardest classes have to be taken, the SATs have to be flawless and Advanced Placement exams have to be vigorously studied for. That’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of books, which is why SparkNotes.com was invented and APnotes.net is so convenient.

I admit it as well, I visit these sites pretty regularly to print out chapter summaries and such, but lately I have been trying an experiment. I’ve actually been doing all of my reading and using the book to complete my history packets instead of the online sites that give all the answers (this is possible because the same book is used for the AP US History course across the country). It sounds ridiculous when I state it like that. Why am I treating the fact that I’m actually completing my work the way it was meant to be completed as a rarity? Because I’m sad to say that it is a rarity, whether it’s because of time constraints or stress, students are reading the condensed versions of A Tale of Two Cities instead of the full classic text and other such examples.

Now I’m not judging--because I do it too--I’m merely observing. Throughout my current “experiment” my test grades may not have been perfect, but I certainly feel like I understand the material more thoroughly, which is the main point of education, right? If you are a student and reading this right now, try it. Take a week and say that you aren’t going to use any study aides and just to you work, if it doesn’t help, by all means use SparkNotes (which really are amazing I might add). However, if the experience you have is similar to mine, you may not want to use them anymore and see how much more you could learn, and that new knowledge of self-reliance is far more valuable than simple textbook facts.