I was completely miserable all through law school, but I am LOVING my new job. And I realized two things today:
1) Everyone else in my office does this thing were we'll start a sentence, stop halfway through, then use a hand gesture to fill in the rest. "I was all..." "It's..." "I'll..." "After I finish the..." And we also use our hands a LOT. Also no one can do math in his or her head. We all had to see it written down. So, basically we're all the same type. Unlike law school, where I was definitely the odd one in the group.
2) I think I have a very visual learning style. I could learn in law school only after I SAW all the elements on the page. I hated class. It was impossible to follow along. But once I saw the material mapped out in an outline, I was fine. And I remember just begging my profs to tell me, "What is this supposed to look like? What does a good answer look like? What do you need to see..." And they would just get really puzzled. "Well, it depends." "I don't need to SEE anything, I need to know you did the work..." It was like being in a foreign country. But at my job, we all speak the same language.
Anyway, I've always been artistic - very observant and nitpicky, really. I think I'm a visual learner, and that has helped and hurt me in my career.
Has anyone else noticed this? If you google it, there's a lot of material on it (I think this is something that's been big in the k-12 education world for a long time, but I don't really know any teachers). And I've never heard anyone else talk about it.
Visual, definitely. I used to require my freshmen to do a learning styles inventory at the beginning of the year. It's really tremendously helpful when you're trying to take classes or just learn something new. Here's one inventory you can take:
http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/ts/style.html
I actually think the multiple-intelligences learning style inventory is more helpful (if only because it's more specific): http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm
(My "intelligences" are intrapersonal, linguistic and logical.)
-- Edited by halleybird at 23:19, 2007-10-04
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"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessities." --Oscar Wilde
well, I took the test that Halleybird suggested (the 1st one) and I had 5 points in auditory and visual, and 6 points in kinesthetic. So I guess I'm kind of equal all around :)
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Fashion is art you live your life in. - Devil Wears Prada | formerly ttara123
2) I think I have a very visual learning style. I could learn in law school only after I SAW all the elements on the page. I hated class. It was impossible to follow along. But once I saw the material mapped out in an outline, I was fine. And I remember just begging my profs to tell me, "What is this supposed to look like? What does a good answer look like? What do you need to see..." And they would just get really puzzled. "Well, it depends." "I don't need to SEE anything, I need to know you did the work..." It was like being in a foreign country. But at my job, we all speak the same language.
oh my gosh, I cant tell you how good that makes me feel! I am a definite visual person. I have this one professor who loves to sound smart and use really big words and make things so much more complicated than they need to be and I'm always like, "sooo, can you show us an example" or "are you going to give this to us in writing" and everyone always rolls there eyes because I'm "that girl" but YOU are smart and it makes me feel better that a smart girl like you feels the same way sometimes too!
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I took hallybirds test and got 7 for visual, 7 for kinesthetic, and 2 for auditory. That seems pretty accurate to me. My "intelligences" are very high for logical and visual/spacial with kinesthtic and intapersonal tied right behind them. I was really low on all the others.
I took HB's test but I could have told you the results beforehand: Kinesthetic. I'm just a touchy kind of gal, I guess.
I remember once taking a "hearing" test in school to decide if that was your learning type and the story was about mining for gold in Africa or something like that. My version? I thought it was about aliens finding rubies on Mars. Not kidding. It was designed to weed out the non-auditory learners but still, that's pretty bad.
Law school was a bitch for me, too, Dizzy. The classes I excelled in were the ones that were practical situations - trials, clinics, etc. All the reading and listening in other classes not only bored me to tears but were practically worthless. I might have nightmares tonight after thinking about this so much! *shudder*
As for HB's other test, I tied on the first three - Kinaesthetic (Body Smart), Musical (Music Smart), and Interpersonal (People Smart). Linguistic (Word Smart) and Logical (Number Smart) were very close behind. The music one is a bit misleading because I have many years of musical training - it's not necessarily natural.
in the first test, i got 11 for auditory, 4 for kinesthetic and only 1 for visual, which i expected as i revise by discussing things with other people and by reading aloud to myself.
in the other test, my intelligences were kinaesthetic (body smart), linguistic (word smart) and interpersonal (people smart), and i scored really low on visual/spatial and musical. i'm not sure whether being an auditory learner and having zero musical intelligence are kind of contradictory lol but never mind
On the first test I scored... 5 Visual 5 Auditory 6 Kinesthetic Don't know if that explains my complete inability to see som'n one-dimensional and make it 3-D in my head. Yup, I was the dorky-girl building models in o-chem.
My top 3 on the second test 1. Intrapersonal (I was just described at opinionated yesterday, heehee) 2. Linguistic 3. Naturalistic
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Curve: The loveliest distance between two points. ~Mae West
I took both tests and for the first one the results were visual. Although, I had difficulty choosing some answers between visual and auditory because sometimes I do both of the choices depending on my mood at the time. I would say I'm more of an even split between visual and auditory.
The results for the second test were:
1. musical 2. visual 3. linguistic
Not surprised by this at all. I've always been highly involved in creative and musical activities and I work in a linguistic and visual field.
Mine are definitely what I would have expected. In the first test kinesthetic with a close second visual and only 2 as auditory. In the second test I am Logical, Interpersonal, then Visual/Spatial. As an engineer thats definitely what I expected. =)
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"Despite all your best intentions, sometimes, fate wins anyway."
Thanks for the test Halleybird! And Collegegirl, don't worry. Everyone feels dumb in law school. That's how it works. The only difference is that some people react by trying to make themselves sound smarter and smarter and some people freak (I was a freaker). Oh, and sorry about the bad memories Bluebirde. (You went to a better school than I did, too. I'd heard things were better higher up on the rankings list).
I'm most definitely an auditory learner. The test confirmed it (1 Visual, 12 Auditory, 3 Kinestethic).
I'm a major talker and listener. Writing comes next, after I've got it sorted in my head.
In law school, my study partner and I would read the outlines out loud to each other and ask each other questions when we studied. That's why we could never study in the library, we'd have disturbed the other students. And when we were studying for the Bar, my friends and I were giving each other X-Manish names to describe our strengths and I got "SoundWave" because if someone said it/explained it, I remembered it.
I wish my Kinesthetic sense was higher though because I'd love to be able to pick up dance choreography really quickly or have a naturally good sense of direction--is that related to the kinesthetic sense? or is that something else?
ETA:
Here are my scores for the other test:
Linguistic: over the 20 mark on the pie chart
Interpersonal: over the 20 mark but not as much as the linguistic
Logical: right under the 15 mark
Visual/Spatial: about halfway between the 10 and the 15 marks.
Intrapersonal: right over the 10 mark
Musical: right under the 10 mark
Naturalistic: right under the 10 mark (just like the musical)
On the first test I got a 9 in visual, a 5 in auditory and a 2 in kinesthetic. On the second one I scored highest in linguistic, with visual and interpersonal right behind. The rest I scored just about evenly on. I think those are very acurate. I can only remember things if I see them written down.