vocabulary

I must have first heard of Quizlet through Lifehacker. Studying my SAT words (believe it or not, vocabulary is not one of my strong suits) is not as much a distant memory as it is for others who have been out of high school for 8 years. I remember taking classes, buying flashcards, and doing whatever it took to have a decent understanding of large words to score well on the SAT. In that way, I wish Quizlet, an online application to make learning vocabulary fun and engaging, was available back when I needed it. Fortunately, for students who do, 17-year-old Andrew Sutherland has already gone well along on his way to make learning big words a little more exciting.

I was reading a recent interview with Andrew, who built the application out of a passion and a need — I don’t think anything like Quizlet exists anywhere else. I know that whenever I go to the house where I grew up, I end up finding a bunch of flashcards that I no longer want to see anymore (man, what a waste of paper!) I also remember being “elected” as the note-taker in high school; one of the easiest ways to absorb lecture notes and book notes was to type up questions and answers in a frequently asked questions document and ask myself the questions again and again. I definitely could have seen myself “quizletting” back in the late 90s… too bad Andrew was only about 8 years old then.