But anyway, I'm gonna be copying over some of my posts from before so this doesn't feel as empty. If I have anything new to write, I'll add it on.
(a post from January 5th)
I can't believe it took a random discussion in English class to make me realize how fucking pathetic I've been acting lately. I've gone through some tough shit this past year, but so what? Everyone does. I can't believe I though the world should stop just because I was going through a crappy time, and I honestly can't believe I was just waiting for "it to get better". I seriously was under the impression that the moment "it got better", I would move on with my life with "the experience" and be a happy, carefree person.
Fuck that. And fuck whoever just sits there waiting for a revelation to happen. News flash: it won't until you make it happen. Your life won't change until you say it should. Expecting other people to change it for you, either be it by their actions or the way they treat you, is just idiotic. My days of feeling sorry for myself are over. It's time to just move and and live life. I'm still a bitch, but hey, at least I can admit I am one instead of making up excuses. Also, I can't believe I don't update my blog more often. I bitch and moan in my mind, but it's so relieving to put it out there. I don't care if anyone reads it, I just want a way to let it all out. It's better than keeping all these thoughts in my head. It may be crap no one cares about, but the thought that someone may read this someday amuses and intrigues me for some reason. I hope they don't like it. I like pissing other people off.
But anyway- on to the real reason why I started writing here in the first place.
Whoever came up with standardized testing and decided that the only way to get Americans to stop being such stupid retards is to cram as much into their brains during their high school years needs to take whatever it is that's up their ass and smack themselves with it. Now, I'm all for better education and better opportunity blah blah blah. It's all beneficial for the country and society as a whole, yes, I get it. What I don't appreciate is tight-ass curriculums. Does the government honestly think that everything they try to instill into our wandering minds will stay there forever. Are they THAT obsessed with raising the nations IQ that they decide it's okay to cram a year's worth of information into a student's head in 3, 4 months? Normally, I would be all for this. I really would... if it weren't for the fact schools get punished if they don't score high enough on those annoying scantron exams we have to take once a year, give or take.
Consider this: A public school needs money just as much as any local business does. They do not want to lose the source of that money. Imagine your parents give you and your siblings $20 allowance per week (you're fucking spoiled if they do, but anyway). If they were suddenly to say, oh, all of you must maintain a 3.0 grade average or else we take everyone's allowance away, wouldn't you force your brothers and sisters to study their little hearts out every night? Wouldn't you ride their ass to make sure their homework was done on time, that they passed in all their projects, that they finished the english book they were supposed to be reading? You need the money. You need to have a social life. You will not allow your lazy 13 year old brother get in the way of that.
Pretty shitty example, but it gets the point across. Schools are then forced to try and make their students smarter in some way, and pressure teachers into fitting extra nitty gritty bullshit into a curriculum that probably wasn't even flawed in the first place. I'm not saying all schools fall victims to the preys of the scary government claws, nor that all teachers are perfect and don't need to be pushed in the right direction... but this is just a general statement. A general statement that pisses me off every time I think about it because I'm a victim of it.
And don't even get me started about college expectations. I could write for days.
I'm actually a decent student. No, in fact, I'm more than that. I don't think my GPA has gone below 3.5 in my 11 years of schooling (that's a B, B- average). Actually, a 3.5 is pretty low for my standards. If it gets anywhere near that, or if I'm miscalculating and it has ever been below, rest assured I raise it back up. But does that necessarily mean I'm smart? Fuck no. It means I was (am) a goody two shoes that memorizes the names of all the alkaline earth metals and can derive a page long formula because I learned it by heart. Does knowing this make me a good person? Does it guarantee I will go out in the world and will contribute to society and the economy in a positive way? Does it mean I will do my country, family, and friends proud? No, it doesn't.
I read and hear people everywhere complain about the stupidity of this nation. Yeah, most of it is filled with fucking idiots who don't know who the second president of the US was but could telh you all the names of the girls in Rock of Love charm school. I don't want to point any fingers, because I'm stepping a bit out of my element here, but what the hell? I am willing to bet a thousand dollars that if half the people in this country actually learned to learn something in school, not just memorize it in time for a test, there wouldn't be as many ignorant fools running around.
Teachers, on average, get a good 30 minutes of teaching time a day. Thing discussed in those 30 minutes may be interesting things, relevant things, or it may just be a waste of my time... but hey, I have to learn it. I can accept that. What ticks me off though is that when certain lessons that could be applied to the real world and are actually relevant have to be cut short, or when similar topics aren't discussed enough or are once but are never mentioned again because we need to stick to the curriculum. We have to be taught crap we will forget by next year. What is worse, when testing time arrives, I try to take all those things I've learned during multiple 30 minute lessons and memorize it so I can pass the class. It doesn't matter how annoying it is. The material was covered, so therefore it's fair game. The next day I'm so frustrated I've forgotten everything but maybe a few details here and there.
I would rather learn ONE thing per class per day instead of be forced to remember a bunch of material so the state can test me on it an the school can be supported by the government. I don't want to be an information robot. I actually want to LEARN things that will be useful to me once I graduate High School. It doesn't matter to me if it's the atomic weight of Nitrogen, but I'd rather be taught one little teeny little detail every 30 minutend I would rather learn it WELL. I'm not saying that my school should lower it's expectations so much that students will be given a month just to learn how to add and subtract. However, when will it become too much? Is it worth going through the entire history of the united states in about 6 months time, only to find out after summer break you can barely remember that conflict in the 60s (what country were we disputing with again? Was communism a big deal?). Is it really really worth learning trigonometry in one month so you can be tested about it and never think of it again? What about all the studies regarding molecular biology, and what the cell 3 cm deep into the fourth muscle of your arm is called? Unless you plan to go into that field of studies, WHEN WILL YOU EVER NEED THAT INFORMATION? I hate how thorough and complex science and mathematics classes have become nowadays. I understand that some things just have to be covered, but do you see every adult in the united states working a graphing calculator, trying to figure out what the fucking asymptote of a random parabola in the middle of nowhere is? No, I don't think so. I understand even bringing those things up in class, to instill some sort of curiosity and encourage those interested to investigate further if they wish, but what about the rest of us who don't really want to know what the atomic mass of boron is?
Of course all that stuff is important. The world would be a pretty shitty place if no one knew that kind of stuff. But must we, 16-17 year olds be subjected to months, even years, of stress just to relieve some wacko paranoia adults have about us turning out like them? Screw that. I'd rather be learning about politics, at least I can see how that's relevant to my everyday life at the moment. And I don't even like politics that much. If somewhere along the line I decide I want to be a rocket scientist, then bring on the three page math problems and logarithms! However, I don't want to spend a good 2 hours of my life doing repetitive math problems on trigonometric graphs about angles that define other angles just because some congressman somewhere voted that we must be tested on a plethora of ridiculous stuff in about a month's time just so they can find an excuse not to fund my school. Heck, I wouldn't even MIND doing the repetitive problems on cosine graphs and their absolute value if I wasn't being forced to know the material by friday. And in no way to I blame my ridiculously awesome teacher for that.
What happened to the days in elementary school where teachers explained something so thoroughly and so carefully that you soon knew the material like you knew your name and your birthday. In fifth grade we spent about a week on prepositions. Guess what? I fucking know them all and could recite them in a heartbeat, and I actually know how and why they're used. Ask me what the hell it was that we learned in calculus in october and I will give you a blank stare.
Sure I’ve learned to deal. I’ll be in college in less than 2 years and will be studying about something I actually give a birds flip about… but when it’s my freakin’ 17th birthday, and I have to turn down dinner invitations from a guy I like because I have to sit at home and figure out how many molecules of water supposedly go together with a fuckin’ hydride ion, that’s when I get seriously pissed off. People everywhere are wasting valuable time memorizing things that won’t be relevant in the long run. In a years time, it won’t even matter if I did this assignment or not. I would have benefited more from picking up a guitar and strumming aimlessly at it than losing a couple of hairs cause I don’t understand the material that’s being thrown in a rush at me. I go to school to LEARN, not to stress myself out and try to cram a week's worth of material into my brain so I can get an A on a test and be considered a good student so I can go to college and actually get somewhere in life. No one is gonna get nowhere like that. No wonder the economy is in the shitter.
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