My English class is going to be really hard this February. We have to do some many things at a time! I mean, come on.

• some of us are going to a speech competition next weekend
• there is a huge project due the Monday after that weekend
• vocabulary lessons due each week and tests on them each week
• reading Romeo and Juliet
• finding, memorizing, and reciting one of Shakespeare’s sonnets
• filling out several pages of examples of literary elements in Romeo and Juliet
• finding 5 connections from Shakespeare to the world today
• writing these journal entries about Shakespeare-related topics given to us by the teacher
• organizing and turning in a binder full of all this stuff
• keeping track of important quotes from Romeo and Juliet
• a test on those quotes

Talk about multi-tasking…From what this sounds like, I can almost compare it to that of some adult working in an office…And don’t forget, I’ve got 6 more classes!

(Though they don’t have the same amount of work in them, of course)

School, English, Shakespeare, Activities, Tests, Literature, Reading, Books, Projects

Recently, I’ve realized what a pet peave it is for me when we have student teachers.

I just think it’s so unfair. My education is important to me, and here comes this person who’s using my education to experiment with his or her own. They’re not qualified teachers, and their methods are usually the cliche, textbook-style teaching methods that they learned yesterday at college.

I guess there’s no real solution to this, but they should at least go teach in elementary or middle school where it’s not as important how the teacher teaches as long as they know what they’re doing.

For some reason, student teachers always come equipped with a plethora of liberal, childish, elementary-school activities for us to do…We’re freshmen! Not 5th graders! Not to mention the poor seniors, some of whom are just three years younger than these student teachers…

Right now I have one in drawing and history class. In history, I’m suddenly becoming a whole lot more bored in class, listening to these retarded lectures which usually involve hearing the same thing about 10 times in the duration of a class period…

School, History, Teachers Activities

My school is a public school. Not a Catholic or other religious school. Now that the second semester has started, the principals have decided to crack down on commonly broken rules. While I agree with some of these rules, there are others that few in the student body (or even the staff) agree with. Some examples:

• No wearing coats in the building (it’s not my fault they can’t regulate the temperature…)
• No headbands (WTF??)
• No electronic devices at all. This means that we can’t even listen to music in study halls or during the hour we wait after we’ve finished exams.
• No spaghetti strap shirts. Many students even agree with this, but I don’t. Whoever made up these rules was like, “OMG your shoulders and neck are visible! Someone’s going to rape you now!!!”
• The lack of an open lunch, which most of the other districts around us have…

That’s not even including the fact that in our school, the right to go to the bathroom when you want to is, in fact, a privilege and not a right. (A privilege often not granted, I might add.)

So, turns out I survived exam week. It wasn’t really that bad. Actually, it was nice having no real homework and getting to talk to friends for about half the day.

The exams themselves weren’t as difficult as I thought they would be. My longest one was biology, at 160 questions. French was gonna be 200 but ended up being 150.

The only problem was, I did occasionally run into things we hadn’t actually discussed in class. That happens every year. And also, every year some of my teachers say the day before the exam, “Oh, I know we didn’t cover this, but study it tonight because it’s on your exam.” I hate that. That’s so annoying. Why can’t they just leave it off? If I could learn things just by studying them by myself, I wouldn’t go to school.

However, because of a two hour delay on Wednesday, we haven’t taken the 3rd period exam yet. That’s English for me. And I’ve been told that it’s the hardest of all the tests, that it will take the full two hours, and that I am (quite simply) screwed.

Well, that’s reassuring.

School, English, Tests, Weather, Exams, Teachers, Biology, French

As I was studying for my history exam today, I was looking at my old tests and quizzes and came across some funny answer choices on questions. Obviously, the answer choices I’ve pointed out here were all wrong answers (I put “…” in place of choices that aren’t interesting):

• “Pedro Alvares Cabral’s defeat of the Arab fleet helped to establish A)…; B) Spanish dominance in South America; C)…; D) the spread of Christianity in the Americas.” Ever heard of Arabs in the Americas?
• “The Dutch colonial settlement on Manhattan Island was called A)…; B) Montreal; C) …; D) Nova Scotia.” Well, I don’t know about Nova Scotia, but I think most high school freshmen know that Montreal is in Canada and that Manhattan Island is, in fact, in the U.S.
• “The Spanish colony that gained its independence during these years was A)…; B)…; C) England; D) the Dutch Netherlands.” Duh. Obviously England was never a colony. WTF?
• “Newton’s theories about the law of gravity were published in A)…; B)…; C) The Skeptical Chymist; D)…” Most people know that the theory of gravity wouldn’t be published in a book about chemists…
• “Deism was characterized by the belief that A)…; B)…; C)…; D) power must be divided equally among seperate government branches.” There IS another word for that, a word which Americans are technically supposed to know already…Coincidentally, it also starts with a “D”…

I suppose that in the end, it all boils down to common sense.

Believe it or not, people DO fail these tests.

School, History, Tests, Quizzes, Exams,

Here it is. The ultimate show down. This next week is the all-feared exam week. It will also be my first experience with high school exams. All of my friends, even the ones who usually don’t care about grades and don’t study, are stressed this time. Come on. If the people who get C’s are worrying, then I, who get A’s, should probably be worrying too.

My first exam is on Tuesday. Geometry. The hardest. Go figure. The other really hard exam, Biology, is last on Friday afternoon. And somewhere in between is Health, English, French II, History, and Concert Band.

The way they do exams at this school is ridiculous. For some reason, EVERY single teacher must give an exam. That means exams in band, choir, art, life management, and even shop. Since exams all must be written (and, for the most part, multiple choice), there is little point in taking exams in classes such as band and art. We have mastered theory ages ago. Right now we’re working on the actual tone, style, and quality of our playing. You can’t test that on paper. I may KNOW that you’re supposed to crescendo or decrescendo with long notes. But do I actually do that? That’s what matters.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we get out early. Like two hours early. However, the buses come at the usual time, and they force you to sit in study hall if (fortunately or unfortunately) your parents work and can’t pick you up. Yeah, sure. Even on Friday. Do you know what the hell there is to study after the last exam, right as the semester is ending? Yep, you guessed. NOTHING. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some sort of transportation arrangement that doesn’t involve studying for hours seating on hard benches in the Commons…

Anyway, wish me luck. My first high school exams. Whoo-hoo! Bring ‘em on!

School, English, Math, Mathematics, Geometry, Science, Biology, Band, Music, French, Tests, Exams, History, Health

The past several days, we’ve been playing a game rather like Who Wants to be a Millionare except with Shakespeare, like I mentioned earlier. The game was really stupid. Some questions were easy, such as “What year did Shakespeare die?”, while others were hard, such as:

• How many miles from London is Stratford? (The teacher said this was important because *gasp* it must have taken Shakespeare a long time to travel…
• What rhythm type is used in sonnets? (The answer was “iambic pentameter”. Does anyone here know what that is?)
• What percentage of the lines in Shakespeare’s plays rhyme?
• How many grandchildren did Shakespeare have? (WHO CARES?)
• Which side of the Thaimes was the Globe Theater on? (Again, WHO CARES?)

And many more like that. When we started complaining, the teacher said “I thought it was obvious!” Well, to a person with a college degree…yeah, I guess it’s obvious. Then she said “One of the websites I went to had this on it.” So? She didn’t tell us to use that website for research, did she? So WTF?

The questions in the game appeared in no particular order (as in, not from easiest to hardest). One of my friends got the iambic pentameter question as the first one, guessed wrong, and got no points at all. I got 100. Most people got between 100 and 1000. The best person in the class got 125,000.

Yeah, this game sucked.

School,English,Games,Shakespeare,Projects,Research

I’m almost done with one of my projects, the tesselations for math. My list of grievances:

• You have to color everything and it takes forever
• The teacher didn’t even tell us what we’re learning from this
• Part of the directions is: “Use your pattern piece from [tesselation] #3 to decorate the front of your [project]…” Who cares how it’s decorated? Why do we have to decorate it at all? Is that teaching us math skills?
• You’re supposed to cut pattern pieces out of cardstock and trace them to do the tesselation. I found it much easier to just lay a piece of grid paper underneath and use it to draw accurate shapes. It’s so much more accurate too. But I still have to make the pattern pieces and pretend that that’s how I did it.
• The grade basically consists of neatness, following directions, and creativity. Those, my friends, are not math skills.

So there you have it. This is pointless busywork assigned by teachers who just don’t want to see us relax during the holidays. If we can’t be doing anything that teaches us something, we should at least do some sort of work, right?

Math, Mathematics, Tessellations, Projects, Art, Coloring, Drawing, Geometry