Filed under: College | Tags: College, education, no child left behind, reading, school
I don’t like school.
I used to, when I was four years old and learning to read. I liked math as long as it consisted of 2 candy bars plus 2 candy bars equals 4 candy bars. But that time has long since passed, and I have spent the last decade of my life mired in a wasteland of algebra, research papers and anatomically correct coloring sheets. There are certain subjects that I loathe less than others. I like books, for example, and will read quite happily as long as no one tells me how to do it. Unfortunately, that seems to have fallen out of vogue with teachers. Reading was a subversive activity in the schools I attended; if I wanted to read one of my library books, I had to hide it under my desk.
With my attention forcibly directed away from my books, my teachers had an opportunity to distract me with the lure of their respective subjects. It didn’t usually happen. Math was a disaster. In sixth grade, my middle school switched to a computer based program that involved Scantron sheets. I spent an hour every day filling in what felt like yards of tiny little bubbles. It was hell, and probably explains my continued distaste for Scantrons. My mathematical education didn’t improve much in the following years. During my sophomore year of high school, I went through three math teachers and learned nothing from any of them. For my junior year, the high school football coach taught me geometry. I didn’t learn much geometry, but we did have a baby shower for two of my pregnant classmates.
Occasionally, the gift of a good teacher made school bearable. My junior AP English teacher was the best English teacher I ever had, and I usually thank him at least once per college paper. My sophomore biology teacher was unfailingly kind to me at a time in my life when I needed kindness the most. The fact that biology was not my best subject didn’t matter to her. They are the bright spots in a high school career full of stress and frustration. I survived high school with the hope that college would be better, and in some ways it is. In many ways, it is its own kind of circus.
You see, I attend a liberal arts university. The university is interested in making me a well-rounded individual. I, however, am not interested in being well-rounded. If a class doesn’t interest me or have anything to do with what I want to do with my life, I don’t want to take it. PE? A joke. Math? We’ve already discussed my experience with math. Physical AND biological science? So much for getting into grad school. But the university is rounding me and the donors are satisfied. Everybody’s happy…except me. I have been in school since the age of four, and I am tired of jumping through flaming academic hoops. I’m not convinced that research papers are the best way to learn anything. Lectures are the equivalent of swallowing a bottle of Ambien. I’m sick of spending my life savings on textbooks.
I don’t like school.
Maybe that’s not what you would expect to hear from a relatively bright person, but it is the truth. I stay in school in order to be successful personally; it’s a matter of playing the game until it’s not necessary anymore. Cynicism, frustration and surrender are the hazards of modern of education. Why else do you think so many children drop out of school? They were left behind long before President Bush took office.
Filed under: College, Politics, Real Life | Tags: Bush, College, conservatives, Goeglin, Iraq, Politics, war
This week has been utterly exhausting. Scratch that; this entire semester has been exhausting. In high school you’re told to work your ass off, get into the good college. No one tells you that if you do get into the good college you will most likely suffer a complete mental breakdown before the age of 21. The stress doesn’t just come from academics. It comes from a bizarre diet of caffeine, pizza and chocolate. It comes from the gastritis caused by said bizarre diet. It comes from your love life (or lack of one, in my case). It comes from a thwarted desire to get the fuck off campus (I don’t have a car). It comes from the mental list of all the things you have yet to do (laundry, vaccuuming, school, sleep, school, school, feed Betta, more school, repeat until graduation day). I always wanted to go to college. I had no idea that doing so would destroy the lining of my stomach as well as what emotional stability I have left from high school.
In more interesting news, I got to talk to Tim Goeglin, Special Aide to the President of the United States. He spoke in chapel (why, I don’t know) and held a question and answer session afterwards. He had some decent things to say, especially in regard to having a woman president. He’s very much in favor of a diverse White House. However, he also claimed that America ‘was the greatest nation in the history of mankind.’ I asked him to defend that assertion without resorting to the defense that America is a Christian nation. His answer avoided that exact terminology, but in classic political fashion he merely couched it in different words. I lost track of how many times he used the phrase “Judeo-Christian values.’ I also found it interesting that when asked about the war in Iraq (I believe the exact question was, “What do you have to say to those who say the war in Iraq is a mistake?”) he began by listing each recent attack against American assets. He gave an exact number of the American dead in each situation. Allegedly, he did this to show the cost of war. However I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t mention the innocent Iraqis and Afghans killed in the war that responded to those attacks. It seems to me that if one wishes to calculate the true cost of war, one should pay attention to everyone that died.
Goeglin also claimed that Bush is ‘a great man’ and asserted that history would most likely regard him as one of the greatest president America has known. I found that to be amusing. I also found it amusing that he claimed that Constantine built the Hagia Sophia. He was attempting to prove the greatness of the Christian religion (by talking about a big church?), but his argument would have been much more affective if he’d gotten his facts right. Justinian and Theodora built the Hagia Sophia. The very name of the church is Greek. Constantine was a Roman. Yes, I’m an anal-retentive history nerd, but these things matter to me. I wonder if he realizes that the Hagia Sophia was eventually turned into a mosque.
Probably not.
