Why I would never want to become a high school teacher. – IHTFP-

When I was looking through the blog entries I made as a freshman, I realized that every other (or maybe every) entry I made was about a class or a grade. I think I post less frequently about grades now, but I’m more or less the same grade-conscious Angie (maybe slightly less because senioritis just started kicking in this week).

I’m feeling slightly indifferent. High school is overrated. I am, however, happy that I have a 99.3% in English, for this quarter anyways. The grade doesn’t include my last essay, which was poorly written but only worth 40 points, and the play, which, despite my worries about the unevenly distributed workload (grading criteria), I think we’ll do well on.

Anywho, onto my stories of the day.

The office secretary just has something against me. My two friends were talking, she looked in our direction, and got on my case for turning a chair around to work on the table. WTF is wrong with swiveling a chair around? It’s not like I want to do homework on a desk whose already limited space is occupied by a keyboard and a desktop. I wasn’t even the one talking! A few months ago, she started yelling at me because I didn’t sign in… Okay, before she came back, I didn’t even know we had to sign in. o_o But other people came in, and they didn’t sign in. She said nothing.

Today, in AP biology, we had a sub. I guess I can’t blame him, but I felt our confrontation was too personal. I would have gone on if I didn’t care about getting an office referral, because he was just unreasonable. So the idiot class before decided to “play around” with the sub. They hid a Nova video that my biology teacher left for us to watch. Occasional breaks from boring lectures are normally welcome, right? Of course, the sub was frustrated. I would have felt the same way. But HE DID NOT HAVE TO TAKE HIS ANGER OUT ON ME. I simply asked if he could pass out our study guide assignment so we could work on it, since our teacher normally doesn’t have a problem with that and since this video was meant for our enjoyment. The study guide was an effing 9 pages long. I DO NOT HAVE TIME THIS WEEKEND. FINALS ARE NEXT WEEK. AND I HAVE ROBOTICS. GREAT. So of course I wanted to get ahead, since she told us we would work on it during class so it wouldn’t be “homework.”

Wow. His response was along the lines of “Who are you to suggest that? You wanted extra time? You just wasted 3 minutes of the class’s time. You guys are only going to do what the teacher has written on her agenda. You’re going to watch the movie now. You can’t do anything else.” Wow, prison, no? But the whole “Who are you” and the “you just wasted” comments felt like a personal attack. I wanted to tell him off soo badly.

(I think I get too emotional too often; I started crying afterwards.)

Ironically, we wasted the next 10 minutes watching ADVERTISEMENTS because he was unwilling to fastforward the tape. (He was afraid he might fastforward too far. Hello? Rewind?) He really must be suspicious of high schoolers. I understand him to an extent. I don’t believe he, as a teacher, had the right to target me as the outsource of his frustrations, although I probably would’ve done the same if I was in his position.

The substitute was my friend’s dad, actually. I skipped lunch. I tend to skip meals when I’m upset. My friend saw me walking in the hallway and apologized for his dad.

This all reminds me of a period during my sophomore year… It was Spanish class, actually. The substitute equated me to a door. Okay, I was seated in front of a projector, and couldn’t see, so I had to stand up. She could have nicely told me that I was blocking other people’s views… But no, she had to outright call me a door, saying how unfair it was of me… WTF. WTF. WTF. Again, personal attack. It might have been a slip of the tongue on her part, but that was just an insult. Wow. I think she later tried to reconcile, but did a really poor job.

And of course, speaking of sophomore year and of the lack of ambition/poor quality of my school’s students… Yes, I read an old blog entry about how people would stick stickers on my back when I wasn’t paying attention. Yep. Everyone in my effing sophomore English and World history classes (the two classes were often jointly taught and the honors students sat in with the non-honors students) were bullies. All they did was laugh or talk aloud during my presentations, vehemently picking on me whenever opportunities to do so arose. During one of my presentations, my teacher started crying because she just couldn’t handle them any more.

Wow. And do you know how many times I cried that year? Our class is the smallest graduating class within recent years because so many idiots have been kicked out. Yet, I can attest to the fact that the faculty still doesn’t do enough to prevent this kind of behavior. It’s ironic. I mean, we’re purported to be one of the best schools in the nation. PSH. Wow. The school overhypes EVERYTHING. Because we’re not, not even close. I mean, half the people here were forced by their parents to attend. They have no ambition whatsoever, and 70% of the students (or so it seems) go to the local community college upon graduation. I know of 3 people that have been accepted to schools the likes of Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Caltech… and that’s in our school’s entire history. Other schools? BARE MINIMUM 3 EVERY YEAR. Wow.

I like my teachers, for the most part. They do give students opportunities to succeed… but unfortunately, very few students actually take advantage of these opportunities. Why we have such a low AP passing rate? HEH. Why do you think?

People are okay with mediocracy. They’re okay with bullying people to get what they want. The actual school environment just can’t compare to what people picture it to be.

I just don’t have any more respect for most of our student body.

And I do have to comment about one other thing. When early application season was in full bloom, I spent a lot of time talking to my counselor about applications and decisions. I did tell her that I wouldn’t have to pay for Caltech tuition if I got in, since my mom worked at JPL (she did e-mail HR and HR did send information back and I know of one other person online who also has a parent working at JPL who is in the same situation, although one of my JPL robotics mentors mentioned that he thought tuition reimbursement wasn’t given any more…). Anyways, information seems to be especially likely to be misconstrued at my school. I told my counselor that I was accepted, and a few hours later, my teachers seemed to have found out that I received a full scholarship to Caltech. HUH!? O_O Only Intel winners or International Olympiad winners (or just really special people) win Axline and whatever else scholarships! Plus, scholarships aren’t even announced until March. Random teachers came up to me saying congratulations… and stuff… but then I had to tell them that I didn’t get a scholarship… it was just because my mom worked at JPL… I mean, at least for my school, I think getting into a top tier university is a big deal, but getting in amidst false information seems to remove some credibility.

A few weeks later, they asked to take my picture for some video presentation they were doing about ROP classes. I didn’t know the full details, but I consented…

And then they let me watch the video one day and boy was I aghast. I blamed the fact that I went to a parochial school that didn’t offer anything beyond Algebra 1 for my inability to become valedictorian. If I was able to take geometry in 8th grade, I probably would have the highest GPA in my class (instead of the second highest). I blamed my high school and my old school for making me retake Spanish 1. I had taken Spanish from 5-7th grade, but because my school ran out of funding, it didn’t offer Spanish in 8th grade. Let me just clarify that I learned exactly what other 8th graders were taught but probably more thoroughly… and yet I had to retake Spanish (because the counselor that assigned me freshman year classes believed that my preparation wasn’t adequate enough…), and that’s the reason why I couldn’t take AP Spanish last year.

Also, one of my friends this year complained that regular chemistry class was too easy for her, and she convinced her counselor to let her take AP chemistry. Last year, my counselor almost didn’t let me, saying the class I took at the community college didn’t allow me to meet the prerequisites. I think that my community college class was more extensive than my AP class… and I feel that I just wasted a summer. I hate politics. Schools do things in their best interests, not in the best interests of the students.

Anyways, back to my story. So somehow, they decided to include how I was at a disadvantage coming into high school because my old school just wasn’t up to par? It seemed like my high school “rescued” me and it was because of my education here that I became who I am now. WOW. O_O Taking undue credit, no? That’s not my methodology. I work my ass off for good grades. I’m freakishly dedicated to everything that I do… and really, I could probably have succeeded more or just as much if I decided to attend the parochial high schools that accepted me with honors at entrance or even my “home school.”

Somehow, even though I had refused ROP credit every single year, they managed to assert that I had taken the robotics ROP class.

And the most inflammatory statement? They decided to stick my college business into the video. WHAT?! They said I was accepted early DECISION to Caltech and that I got a FULL SCHOLARSHIP.

HUH!? Dude. This is a public presentation… And they’re spreading false information. Is this considered libel? But libel has to be negative… right? I’m freakishly embarrassed.

I got off topic (originally I was going to talk about what happened yesterday and today).

Last comment: Today, a “Harvard representative” came to talk to students. The Harvard representative was an ’07 graduate from a local high school. He was impressive and eloquent. Our student body was not. I decided to attend because I was curious. Why they decided to send him after applications were turned in… I have no idea. I might have actually finished applying if he came before. Of course, our school never gets any representatives from prestigious colleges (unless you consider USC and UCLA prestigious)… whereas Caltech and MIT representatives do go to other schools so bleh! (And here we are supposed to be a math/science/technology magnet HAH). Okay, so maybe 6 or 7 people actually showed up. Talk about disappointing audience? And boy did we represent our school poorly (or maybe in its true colors?). Does going to *insert local community college* save money? What kind of grades do you have to have to get in? Do we have to take AP classes? Can we live in apartments? What are concentrations? etc. etc. Some 3 girls asked a few questions about terminology that the representative had already explicitly mentioned beforehand. They seemed disinterested. They were surprised that he got into UPenn’s Wharton, USC, UCLA, CAL… if he gets into Harvard, which has a less than 10% acceptance rate, chances are he will get into these other schools, considering their acceptance rates are higher… And it’s not really too much of a surprise… and his mannerisms and overall image seemed to have a much more intellectual quality than those of our student body… Just dumb questions (ignorance?) and poorly articulated statements… in comparison to his, and I just felt that reflected poorly on our school (in addition to the low attendance).

Okay, somewhere in my post, I should have mentioned that I have robotics all weekend and no time to do homework, but somehow I managed to spend the last hour and a half typing this.

-6:05 PM-

This is why I love livejournal. I would love it if you could reason with me and convince me that my rants and statements are unjustified.

But until you do, I will maintain that my school… [insert something here] (Teachers and actual friends who I have respect for not included.)

Edit: I feel very condescending (is that the right word?)… I e-mailed the robotics mailing list about JPL internship applications. The one rookie that was kicked off of the team for subpar grades had the audacity to ask me if he qualified. If he was in the least bit interested, he would have actually read through the link I gave him…

Being lazy is absolutely no good.