Just me again... <Ramblings of Red>

[CinnamonSynonym]

I've been thinking a lot lately (lots of neural downtime @ school), and don't really think there's a better place than here to put my ramlbes, as I shall call them.

First of all, let me tell you all how great it is to know that I am not the only one who simply hates school. However, I'm not sure that my specific reason is similarly popular.

I hate school because it's too generalized. People are sorted by age group, regardless of their intelligence or knowledge.

Also, I don't like all of the 'useless' stuff. If I would like a career in electrical engineering, I'm fairly certain that I won't have to write a creative writing story about a monster, detailing the five senses plus exaggeration, along with a fair amount of properly formatted dialogue. Ever.

And, as I have noted before, I do not like school's ability to take everything enjoyable out of everything enjoyable. My prime example thus far has been reading, ruined by frequent interruptions to write why the butler did it. However, I do believe that math is subject to a similar process. I love math, as a subject, but the repetition contained in a single homework assignment has trained me well to hate math as a school subject.

I have considered writing an email to the Dept. of Education (state or federal) asking, among other things, why there are so many seemingly useless curricula.

I would love the opportunity to test out of English, at this point. I have already taken ELA 9 once, as part of an 'accelerated learning' program at a local college, but my high school refuses to acknowledge the credit and is making me retake it. There is not even a test-out available for ELA 9, which might be because somebody was too lazy to make one. I think I will ask about this as well in me email.

Back to this 'accelerated learning' bit. Once a week (per class), I left right before lunch ended, got on a bus, and headed to college. Most people would be confused and/or impressed, and I would have to tell them that they were high-school level classes at the college. In order to get in this program, you must take the ACT and get a certain score (I think 21, which was 3 above the national average). This meant a smaller class size and hence a more educational experience. Honestly, I was pleased. We went through a chapter a week, meeting for 2 and a half hours each week. We went faster, but there was a high teacher:student ratio (1:14, more than double most high school classes) that everyone got what they needed. This ended up meaning more free time because I was able to do the work faster.

My other main beef with school is how it dominates my life. I get up at 6, and can do very little personally satisfying things until 4:30-ish, where I have an hour and a half, then dinner, then 2 hours (3 if I feel really good, or have a good movie), then wait, dreading the next repeat of this horrible cycle, for sleep to engulf me.

However, I like tests. Very little repetition, just you, proving that you know what you have to know. Yes, what we have to know shouldn't be controlled by anyone other than us, much less the government, but tests are my favorite bit of school. And better still, there is usually no homework on test days because the teacher usually can't teach a lesson during the class time.

Standardized tests, on the other hand, are a different story. While still being better than some classes, it is pretty bad to have to sit still for 4 hours and answer questions that are either A) freakishly obvious, or B) so unrelated to anything you have ever known so you just put C. Worse yet, I have to take an average of about 3 different standardized tests a year, one of them 3 times (to 'gauge my progress').

All in all, I usually like clear-cut answers to questions. Like math, for example. If 2x-3 is equal to 11, then x is equal to 7. Not kinda 7. Not maybe 7, or 8. But just 7. Anything else is bound to have the teacher's opinion mixed in there, which you must give in to if you are going to pass the class.

Also, gym. I didn't dislike gym in 8th grade, but I do in 9th. Last year, it was all fun and games. Literally. We played a different game each day, from football to volleyball to matball. We even went outside every once in a while and played kickball. Now, we do push-ups for 2 minutes, then we run. Keep in mind that this is an hour-long class, and sometimes we don't quite make it back from the track before the bell rings. Now, there are some other things, like lifting weights, which is closer to okay than anything else, and there's supposed to be a swimming unit coming up (which I expect to be a 'swim back an forth for an hour' type thing), but it just sucks, usually.

So, that's that, I guess... Until next <RoR>

[SoulRiser]

Yep, it's definitely too generalized, and most of the stuff is useless, or at least taught in useless and boring ways that suck all the interest out of it. It's almost like they WANT to make people hate learning...

[Heil_Kaiba8921]

if you're gym class is like mine when it comes to swimming, it mostly will be going back and forth, i took part of mine in the summer by the way so this isn't going to be that great of a reference-ish thing, the short way across the pool for a few days and for warm-ups, and every now n then you will have to race eachother length-wise down the pool and back, which isn't fun if you're not a strong swimmer on your stomach, and eventually you will get to dive off of the diving board, which i hated when we did that on the last day because we went down and back 4 times so when i got out of the pool my legs were really weak and i had to lock my knees in order to stand up against a wall, if i stopped putting pressure on them for a second it would give out and i would almost fall to the floor. When it was my turn to jump off the diving board, i had two fears running through my mind, my slight fear of heights and the fear that i would drown, but luckily the teacher was nice to those of us that didn't want to or couldn't dive, me and like 2 or 3 other kids out of a bunch in my class.

All in all, swimming won't be so bad, i just hated it because even though i have a lake in my backyard, i never really go swimming so i'm really only good enough to get on my back and backstroke to shore to save my life, that's it.