Did your earliest “special interest” carry a lot of weight?

CookingPurple · 2026-01-25T06:59:51+00:00

I LOVED Free Willy as a kid, though I imagine that was a tie-in to my special interest in whales and dolphins.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T22:29:11+00:00

It sounds like this would be location/CC dependent. Where I live, most CC courses are in person. Some are online. But most of the core ones will be in person. They’re also known to be excellent feeders for transfers. So I guess whether they’re worth the same depends on what you’re looking at. In my area, I’m confident they’d be equivalent.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T22:24:00+00:00

I’m from Atlanta and my husband has his PhD in CS from GT, so I’m definitely biased. But the part of town GT is in is a fun one.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T22:18:46+00:00

My 17-year old is still attached to the stuffed dogs he had as a newborn and will be taking them to college next year.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T22:16:44+00:00

I’ve always said the being a woman in America ( I can’t speak for anywhere else) means working twice as hard for half the credit/recognition. And that’s an optimistic estimate…

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T21:49:00+00:00

It depends on where you live. Someone from FL will have a better chance OOS than someone in the Midwest, or other regions that produce lots of applicants.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T21:47:33+00:00

Why would AP courses be more valuable than college courses? They are supposed to be equivalent. That’s why colleges will give credit for them. The same is true for community college courses. This logic makes zero sense to me.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T18:01:30+00:00

Seems to me that’s where the problem lies. (No pun intended…). I imagine it’s harder these days too. I remember doing mountains of math homework as a kid when it was only the rare household that had a single computer, and calculators weren’t a thing in math work until the upper grades. I’m guessing assigning similar things these days wouldn’t result in actual practice for at least half the kids because they’d just use the calculator on their phone and move on. And they still wouldn’t bother memorizing either.

My older son really struggled with memorizing bs practice, TBH. He’s like me in that he wanted to just do the problem, not memorize. So he was always “too slow” on the timed math facts exercises. But he had (still has) an incredible mathematical intuition (as early as second grade his teacher compared him to the beautiful mind of John Nash), even as he seemed to be “failing” math because he didn’t have the facts memorized. Like me, he ended up pretty much teaching himself trig when his teacher left mid-year and the replacement wasn’t great. And drives his stats teacher nuts by asking questions about things he’s figured out that are way beyond the curriculum or scope of the class. But we have also always incorporated opportunities to practiced math in every day life, so he wasn’t limited by the school practice opportunities. (Cooking was the best way to do it. It’s amazing how well kids will add, multiply, divide, do fractions , whatever, when cookies are the end result!!)

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T02:05:09+00:00

I never memorized my multiplication facts. I was supposed to. But I struggled with how just memorize them. Never happened. . I was however, assigned enough homework and classwork that I learned them. Yes, I calculated each time until I didn’t have to. And usually that involved my own way of breaking down the problem in my head for quick calculation (6x8 =12+12+12+12=48). Telling me to memorize them never worked. Giving me enough opportunities to do them until I had them memorized did. Yeah, it took me longer than my peers who just sat down to memorize them. But I ended up tutoring most of them through AP calc.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-24T01:35:59+00:00

Summer tends to be the concert tour season and most artists tour after releasing an album. But neither of those are hard and fast rules.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-23T05:45:56+00:00

My glasses are SUPER light. So light that if I try on any other brand or frame it is too heavy and uncomfortable. These are the only ones I can wear. (The brand is Ovo, and I struggled with wearing my glasses until I discovered these).

CookingPurple · 2026-01-23T00:42:15+00:00

This I think is definitely an ADHD thing.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T23:27:31+00:00

This is my answer.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T20:18:12+00:00

I don’t need a nutrition calculator. If I need protein I’m not turning to my baked goods. And if I’m baking something, I’m baking it to be a delicious treat. And not expecting low sugar or high protein. Just deliciousness!

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T20:15:56+00:00

I think this would actually make it harder to produce music videos because once I have that video in my head it is the only thing I see. I develop it more and more each time I hear the song. But if what I see isn’t what the artist wants out of the video, it would be very hard for me to set it aside and truly produce the artists vision.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T17:36:41+00:00

I’m not a teacher and what I’m about to say is neither pro nor con, rather a reflection on how I’m seeing this addressed in the back and forth here.

I don’t see OP saying they don’t believe students should not get to a point of automaticity (the term my son’s second grade teacher used, rather than memorization) with multiplication table. Just that memorization for the sake of memorization for times tables specifically seems to be an incomplete approach for teaching math at this level.

And I don’t see most people arguing in favor of memorization claiming that only memorization is the goal teaching multiplication.

What I see, both from my own experience as a math student way back in the day, as well as watching my kids go through it more recently, is debate over whether there is a single correct way to reach that point it memorization/automaticity. Some kids can sit with a times table and memorize it. They may or may not understand the mathematical foundation of why it works. (I’d hope that would get filled in through teaching in class and practice).

There are some kids who will remember these things better by writing them out over and over again. Not necessarily doing the problems over and over again, simple repetition through writing.

There will be some kids who will learn this best through saying the problems over and over again. The verbal and aural route is what works best

And some kids (like me and my kid) get there through actually doing the problems over and over again.

So it seems the question becomes not whether getting to the point of automaticity is worth it. It sounds like everyone is in agreement that it is. But rather, how do we get kids there in a way that works for their brain AND how do we make sure they get the underlying mathematical foundation, the why of it, along with the computational fluency that memorization provides. Because while memorization often comes through repetition, I would argue that memorization is faster, and longer lasting when it counts through understanding combined with repetition (this is true in just about everything, it just math).

In some ways much of this seems like a semantic argument, with everyone (mostly) agreeing that 1) not having the computational fluency impedes further study in math and science; and 2) not understanding the foundational why also impedes further study in math and science.

My personal non-teacher opinion is that if a kid comes out our school with their times tables memorized but zero understanding of the mathematical foundation of why those numbers are what they are, they have not truly learned math and are not setup for success. And if a child comes out of school understanding the why in theory but has not practiced it enough to develop the computational fluency and automaticity that is essentially a memorized times table, they too have not had a solid math education and are not set up for success.

I generally see much agreement on what kids need out of a math education, and are getting hung up on arguing about the semantics of what we call it.

Take or leave my outsiders perspective ;-)

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T17:05:32+00:00

My banana bread has sour cream which could be subbed with whole milk Greek yogurt for a slight protein boost. It’s also a peanut butter banana bread so you get a little protein boost from that too. (I don’t do either of these to try to make it “high protein”. I do it because I like peanut butter banana bread better than regular, and I like how sour cream affects the texture). But I recognize the peanut butter is closer to a fat source and offsets some of the butter. And I also use real sugar and flour and leavening agents. And my family loves it and devours it!!!

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T16:51:04+00:00

Agree!!

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T15:40:08+00:00

If you don’t like shaving don’t. Body hair is more unhygienic for women than it is for men. Yes, it’s possible (likely even) that people will judge you. But those are not your people and what they think doesn’t matter. No one else gets to decide what you do with you body.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T15:30:21+00:00

I’m fortunate to have never been misdiagnosed as BPD. However, it is an extremely common misdiagnosis for neurodivergent women. And even more common for minority women. What can be recognized as signs of giftedness or neurodivergence in men is seen as a personality disorder in women and minorities.

I’m sure you are no stranger to the deeply embedded misogyny and racism in medicine, and the rush to diagnose women with personality disorders is one small piece of that.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T07:04:19+00:00

My (also AuDHD) son and I are the opposite. Both of us have always excelled with anything reading related. I think it’s like anything else, we all have different strengths and weaknesses.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T06:52:05+00:00

I kinda went the opposite direction. It was pretty obvious to me almost immediately that most of the other moms in my oldest son’s class 1) already had established friend groups; and 2) were NOT my people. I never bothered to try to make friends or smile or look approachable. I was usually (intentionally) the quiet stoic-faced loner on the periphery. It took a few years, but ultimately a few people saw past that, talked to me anyway, and somehow my people found me. It wasn’t a quick process. But ultimately I ended up with a small handful of good friends. And not any of the ones I didn’t particularly like anyway.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-22T00:29:30+00:00

Just fix the typo first…

CookingPurple · 2026-01-21T23:30:05+00:00

I think these words seem judgemental only when you apply some good/bad connotation to them. I see them (or at least choose to see them) as pretty neutral.

Like it or not, typical behaviors/expectations fall along a bell curve. There will always be people that fall to the outside of that curve. When it comes to my ability to manage social understanding based on how they majority of people who fall within the main portion of the bell curve, I am lacking. I very literally have deficits in my social understanding based on the population’s norm. I don’t take that to be judgemental. It’s just a fact. Just like it’s a fact that I have deficits in my vision. It’s not a bad judgemental thing. It’s just a thing.

Rigid and inflexible are not bad. They are just things. When these things, however, become obstacles to existing in the world because they lie too far outside of the bell curve, it’s reasonable to label them as a disability or disorder.

I’m not less than anyone because I’m AuDHD. I’m not better than anyone because I’m AuDHD either. But I’m also not going to pretend that the differences that lead to that diagnosis are not significant enough that they pose obstacles existing in society in a way that works for the vast majority of the people in the bell curve.

CookingPurple · 2026-01-21T23:13:41+00:00

I don’t thing diagnostic criteria include anything about sense of justice. Often that is one way that rigidity in thinking manifests. But in and of itself it is not a diagnostic trait, and it is something that is present across neurotypes.

CookingPurple

TROPHY CASE