Because I'm Still In High School...

...I feel obliged to announce my opinion on my schedule since I just finished my first week of class.

French is going to be the exact same shit that it has been for 5 years: pretend to read/write/speak/understand a language I don't know or care about. I was coerced into taking it another year because apparently this last year will permit me to pass an entrance examination to some schools that would otherwise force me to take such language classes in college.

English... don't even get me started on English. Our school is an International Baccalaureate school, meaning that the kids here are slaves to homework and don't understand what it is like to actually learn in school or acquire knowledge in a manner that is deemed appropriate by colleges... or employers. My feelings of malevolence toward the IB program were enhanced by my IB English Oral presentation last year, which may be why I was so reluctant to sign up for another year of this bullshit. My presentation was scheduled for the Wednesday after a Legends weekend camp, and I hadn't had any time to write it or prepare any homework. So I stayed awake for more than 72 hours in order to complete both my homework and write/memorize my presentation. Needless to say, by the time it was time for me to present, I was a complete zombie and failed. I became the first person in Portage Central history to put forth an honest effort on this project and fail. Perhaps the worst part is that I honestly can't remember those three days. I have no recollection other than the actual moment of truth. I was so frustrated that I resigned myself never to complete another assignment for that class. Unfortunately, I had just missed the dual enrollment deadline for English classes at some local colleges, and it would be transcript suicide to drop down from IB English to regular English during my senior year. So, here I am in another year of IB English. We'll see how things play out.

Determined to drop at least one IB class, I discontinued my career in IB History in exchange for AP Psychology, which should hopefully be more interesting. Then I have a nice long lunch period (occasionally 2.5 hours) before classes start downtown at KAMSC. Then I have Organic Chemistry, which is supposedly a horrible class. Scary shit. After that, AP Statistics, which is supposedly taught by a horrible teacher and is a horrible subject. I wrap up my day with Geology, which is both interesting (to me) and taught by the one of the best teachers (if not the best) I've ever had. Finish strong!

Although my schedule was originally intended to be low-stress in order to actually be happy my senior year, it has turned out to be a moderate disaster regarding workload. This pressure is increased by the fact that my top-choice college, University of Michigan, will probably not accept me due to my recalculated GPA of 3.5. Oddly, I've been told that I'm more likely to get into the more selective College of Engineering because of my 35 ACT math score. I hope that I do get in there, but I'm not determined to go there... but I'd still be disappointed. U of M always accepts most KAMSC students, and I don't really want to be a member of the few that don't.

The stress that seems to have consistently followed me through high school (despite my best efforts at avoiding it) I've only recently realized are due entirely to the sheer quantity of homework that the average student has to put up with on a daily basis. Ironically, it's almost a better method of teaching to not assign homework. In my previous physics course, there was never any homework other than the occasional lab report, but I've retained more from that class than any other I've had in high school because of the pressure that is put on the students to actually study the material and the fact that the teacher actually teaches the class instead of relying on some textbook or some homework problems to do the work for them. In addition to being a much more low-stress option for the student, it makes the students so much smarter, since being fed homework assignments to do is nothing compared to the real-world value of leaving students to fend/study for themselves. If someone shirks the responsibility of studying for an exam, he/she deserves to fail, and I'm sick of our public schools kissing the asses of their student body. School shouldn't be about getting every kid to pass; it's about giving them the tools necessary to pass. I'm sure this is a topic that has been beaten to death by educational committees around the globe, but I can't help but whine about it until somebody with the power to change things is willing to address the issue.