Wednesday, February 10, 2016 "High English."

Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Week: 26
Songs to Remember: Best of 2015 K-POP Mega Mashup - SHIMMIXES

        I don't think English teachers are supposed to expect their students to be artists. If our group decides on doing silhouettes of a scene consisting of just a woman being hanged by a tree, there's nothing really to "draw." I drew a tree shape as a template to cut out on black construction paper. But uh, apparently that isn't enough for him to sign off on my participation sheet, which does count for points.

        Says right here on the assignment post on Schoolloop, as a group, we gotta "represent the key events of Book 1 solely through images. (The objective here is not to produce 'works of art,' but instead to review major events and the means by which Morrison organizes them." Our group is doing silhouettes, and we didn't discuss poster size due to time constraints. So, I brought black construction paper, a rough drawing of a tree after knowing what the poster size is so I don't cut multiple sizes of trees and waste fucking time.

        "You can use paper and markers. (Alternatively, for the sake of time and ease, you may represent the main events of Book 1 through found images on the Web or in magazines)." He even signed off on people who just printed out fucking pictures. For fuck's sake, his participation sheets are the reason I'm at a C instead of maybe a B-. I thought it was English class, apparently it's a drawing class as well, with a side of forced participation. Some people in the class that I know do their work, get good grades on their essays, but have a lower grade than they would like all because of the fucking participation shit.

        And I know some people who switched out of Honors English/ dropped to regular English, all because of this teacher. Jesus dude, thank the fucking lord it's just Honors and all we have to worry about is the final. Other than that, it's like AP English but without worrying for the AP test. Today, as the other teacher was presenting to us a short outline of AP Literature, he said that his class (this class), is a "cakewalk." The other teacher wondered why not many people are taking AP Literature (AP English is not offered at our school, and yes, there's apparently a difference). I'm like "Well wadyu think?"

        Anyways, that was a small rant on why I'm not going to take AP English, my teacher's making me hate English a lot more than I'd like. And yeah, excuses, excuses, bad reasons why I'm not doing as well as I'd like in English, I only have myself to blame, the teacher's doing his best, he does his job well, etc, etc. I get it. I've had many teachers before, but this teacher, I just don't like his teaching style. Whatever it is, I prefer other methods.

        Okay, enough of that. Psychology, where we do notes and watch videos of the Bobo doll experiment with kids going ham on a clown. English, we've been through this already, we were supposed to have 20 minutes to make our poster with our group, then do a bootleg "gallery walk" around the classroom. Would rather just review the events of the book, but okay. Another English teacher walks in, does a presentation on AP Literature, takes up about 20 minutes but that's okay, we barely get anything done because it was a Wednesday so, shorter period, and uh, guess we're continuing this tomorrow.

        Biology was another "free" day sorta. AP Biology really has turned into self-study thing, where you just get lectures, time in class to do study shit, not much of actual, I don't know, like, "learning," I guess. Not in a bad way, though, but you get what I mean. We had mealworms,we created our own experiment, was pretty bootleg, umm, most of my group members focused more on talking about schedules and classes to take, so, it was whatever really, doesn't bother me because they're doing like 4 AP's, they're levels above me.

        Math was the usual again, we do a lesson, and uh, get our quizzes back. The teacher didn't announce any 100%'s, umm, I'm guessing nobody got a 100%. I got 15/16 fortunately, better than my other score. I knew it was too good to be true, I can never get a real 100% in her class, heh. I made the stupid mistake of mislabeling a triangle. Ah well. Anyways, I had her sign my schedule sheet for AP Calculus AB, which did make her happy, knowing that I'm pursuing a high-level math. And uh, right now, even though it is MATH, I'm leaning towards it now more than science or English. Science is a starting to become a bit more similar to English with it's abstract-ness, and I don't really like that.

        After class I got my AP sheet signed by one of the AP Calculus teacher, supposedly the harder of the 2 AP Calculus AB teachers. Had to input my name on a list, had to get my math teacher to write my grade and sign it, for her to sign it. I actually searched up posts on forums on people asking whether to take both AP Calculus or not. All my friends are taking like, more than one AP class next year, and it's not because I'm following their footsteps, it's because of the fact that if they can handle, 2, 3, even for AP's while doing extracurricular shit, then I can handle just 2 AP's.

        So, that is why I'm going to do both AP Statistics and AP Calculus AB. I'll hopefully do okay in Calc because I'll have Slader for explanations (I only care about the explanations/ problem templates, if I wanted answers, I'd just look in the back of the book. Also the teacher actually looks at work you do on your homework, so yeah). AP Statistics is supposedly not that difficult of a class because it's slower compared to Calculus, and, it's like 2 different things so I won't get them mixed up. Also, my old Geometry teacher's gonna (hopefully) be teaching me, so I know I'll be secured just by that.

        Lunch, was just whatever again. US History, where we did a small practice quiz on people during the 50's. I actually knew more than I thought. It also took up the whole class period too surprisingly. Finally, Chinese, where we had a vocabulary quiz, which I had to study quickly during the duration of US History. I got an 18/20 again, so, I'll take it. The rest of class was just Chromebook work on our "skits" which are due tomorrow night.

        And can you believe there's break next week? Thank the fucking lord. That reminds me, there's apparently a summer assignment for AP Calculus AB. You get a packet, very large packet, of multiple choice problems. You gotta show all, and I mean ALL, of the work. If you gotta justify something, you better be ready to write a fucking essay on that shit. But yeah, thankfully AP Statistics doesn't have a summer assignment. I don't think.

        And one more thing that I need to talk about before I end this 1-hour post (seriously, I've been writing this for close to an hour now). The life of a student vs. what the life of a student is to a teacher. Some teachers forget that their students have 5 other classes, sometimes 7, not including night classes at community colleges or test prep classes on the weekends. They measure their work like "Hmmm, the homework's only 2 hours long, they'll have plenty of time to like, relax, or, eat dinner or whatever." Piling those 2 hours onto an hour from another class, but 30 minutes from 2 more classes, plus another hour, it's fucking insane.

        That's not including extracurricular activities either like sports, where some people don't come home 'till 6:00 PM, where they gotta change, shower, eat dinner, plan shit out, do extra studying for an upcoming test, all on top of work. We, as students, don't have your class as our only class. We have other things to focus on besides English, English, English. We don't want to become fucking J.K Rowling because it's near impossible. Many authors have books that are like "New York's #1 Best Seller," sharing the title with like 500 other books, and no, their books aren't being read in High school or college classrooms, because they're modern.

        My Biology teacher made a great point today, in that we have to go to school 5 days a week for 8 hours straight, whereas college, you only go to class a select amount of days a week, for a select amount of time. Anyways, that's enough ranting, just wanted to get some extra steam out. This generation's education is on an incomprehensible level. That's just my perspective coming from a High school Junior in 2016. Whether I'm wrong or right, that's just how I feel. Let me know if you've kept your sanity when you come back reading this, okay Drew?

        Alrighty, see ya.