Tag Archives: school

The Junior Load

Junior Year

Junior Year

The great writers have said that hard work breeds a good work ethic and a good work ethic breeds success and success breeds greatness. Well judging by the strained and frantic faces of the students of the class of 2015, we are all going to be great because MAN they are working us hard!

I’m back Back to School only three days and already I feel the pressure. Seven academic classes are on my roster and not one of them offering any solace of ease or simplicity.All my teachers profess rigorous courses and hard grading, “You guys aren’t babies anymore…” One teacher said sternly the first day as he handed out a packet of homework to do over the weekend, “So we aren’t gonna treat you like babies anymore.”

The Stack

The Stack

Junior year is notoriously classified as the most difficult year of high school, and this week I have discovered that that reputation is not just a lie to scare freshman. Mounds of liberally doled out homework pile up in my backpack as the day wears on, while each teacher emphatically promise that their class will take all our work ethic and willpower to pass. Let’s just say the physical toll of their enthusiasm is already giving me aches in both my head and my back (its one thing to assign a packet from the textbook to a kid, it’s quite another creature to make that kid walk 1.2 miles uphill with seven such textbooks weighing down on their sore shoulders in the hot August sun… uphill, both ways, in two feet of snow with no shoes… Oh wait, that’s Bill Cosby… nevermind

Yes I cannot wait to get other means of transporting myself from school, as walking home, while it may be building my rather nonexistent muscles, is quite a trying affair after a long day of realizing I know nothing at all. Well, hopefully I can get my driver’s license in October and cease to be one of the carless masses.

 

But school isn’t all bad of course. I fact, I am quite enjoying this intense and brain-challenging curriculum so far, despite my more complaining muscles protesting the workload. All my teachers are the type that are fantastic and very involved in what they teach. Each poses their respective subject as a new and exciting way to expand one’s mind and become a more sophisticated and well-rounded person. My Chemistry teacher speaks of matter and bonds between elements as the basis of our world, my AP US History professor talks of making us informed and responsible citizens of this great republic, my French teach tells us in langue français that we will be able to speak with confidence in a language not our own, my Algebra teacher states with solid certainty that she will lead us through the doors of mathematical knowledge and show us the basic truths of our world through numbers, my AP Art History professor declares we will become cosmopolitan connoisseurs of complicated images from across the span of human history, my Journalism teacher tell me she will make a plucky girl-reporter out of me, and my AP Language and Composition teacher states his class will change our lives and mold us into free-thinkers who can write about the human condition in the same way as the titans of literature.

Study, Study, Study!

Study, Study, Study!

To each teacher, we are a brain to be shaped and filled with knowledge until our minds threaten to burst at the seems. We are not a commodity to them, I don’t think, but sometimes it feels difficult to reconcile the reality of life to what they say. Can I become a free thinker in 45 minutes a day for nine months when I am being shaped into an art connoisseur at the same time? Is my brain elastic enough to be pulled in seven opposite directions without tearing? Is my back strong enough to bear the brunt of the seemingly numberless tomes that are piled in my outstretched hands? Will my fragile and delicate GPA survive this dark night of a thousand facts clawing for space in my mind? Can I do this?

My English teacher said today that there were three reactions to the realization of how much hard work we were expected to contribute to this class. 1) Give up. Transfer out. Sue him for being too hard. 2) Go home and eat 50 Twinkies and cry over the misery of your existence. 3) Become hungry for knowledge and find the will to put in the extra 110%.

Well, when I got home today I felt like #2. Maybe when I started writing this post I felt that way too, bemoaning my existence and wishing for a less challenging year. But I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t want to be afraid of my GPA falling so much that I don’t try to aim for the stars. Even if that means I’ll be doing ten hours of homework every night, I am not going to take the easy route. That is not who I was taught to be.

I am going to give my all for the Glory of God and am not going to give up without a fight. Bring it on Junior Year! I am ready!

End of rant.

I Will Overcome!

I Will Overcome!

School Supplies!

 

Packed And Ready To Go

Packed And Ready To Go

Seven binders, various colors. Three, 200 page packets of college ruled filler paper. Two packets of 8 notebook dividers. One hard pencil case. Two packs of Paper-Mate mechanical pencils, 12 per pack. Two rolls Scotch tape. Three fine point Sharpies. Two packs of blue and black ballpoint pens, two per pack. One pack of 24 colored pencils. One red pencil sharpener. Two Elmer’s glue sticks. One pair Fiskar’s safety scissors. One box of twelve highlighters, assorted colors. One packet of 360 index cards, assorted colors. One pocketed folder, detail of The Avengers. One pack of mint gum.

Seven classes, 180 days of school, about eight hours a day from 7:00 Am to 2:30. That is how long the piles of supplies I bought yesterday in a frenzied tax-free shopping spree must last me. I gazed over my mountainous pile of binders and saw my not-so-distant future, a future where I am carefully balancing a leaning-tower-of-Pisa-like stack of textbooks and binders as I run through the congested halls of my high school that swarms with throngs of busy students pushing their way to class. Five days till then, as of now, when I will once again walk through those school doors that I haven’t opened since my two month long summer hiatus began in late May.

I must say I am eager to start. I have always loved learning new things and meeting new teachers. I relish in the smell of new textbooks and the easy way unused binders click open without the swell of random papers inhibiting their movement. I love the feel of new clothes on my back and a new year to make my own.

 

My Heavy Load

My Heavy Load

But then again, I am also sad, not just because a new school year forces me to wake up at such an ungodly hour as 6 AM, but also because I realize that my childhood’s end is fast approaching. I will be a junior, 11th grade, my penultimate year of high school in which I have 180 days to go before I am a senior. I am growing up and getting dangerously close to adulthood. It’s scary. Every year that passes by is another year I am farther from being a carefree little toddler who’s only worries were when she could play with her Barbies and postponing bedtime to as far back as possible. I’m getting old, which may sound funny from a sixteen year old, but when you think about it, we are all on an inexorable march toward our inevitable mortality.

In the end, there is very little space between being 16 and 20, 20 and 35, 35 and 50, and 50 and 80. While the days are long, the years are short and eventually, most of us will grow old, and all of us will die. Heavy stuff, I know, but transitions like going into a new year of school have the tendency to make me ponder the transience of human life. Our meager span of 70 odd years seems so swift and insignificant, over in a blink of an eye. How does one find their purpose quickly enough to capitalize on what short time one has left?

Luckily, I have found my purpose early in life. Loving and obeying God and serving others is the greatest objective a person can have. A relationship with Him is the only thing that can save from the crushing hopelessness and finality of death, both in the literal and the spiritual sense. Love for God is the only thing that can give me true fulfillment, and love for God is the only thing that will bring me peace.

Now I gather all my many school supplies and stuff them into my bulging backpack, ready to be picked up and taken into a new year. Although weighed down by all my heavy books and binders, I look up and murmur a small prayer for His guidance through the year. I will work hard and do my best, but in the end, it is all up to Him.

Stuffed To The Gills!

Stuffed To The Gills!

A.C.T. Test

Pencil and calculator in hand...

Pencil and calculator in hand…

I had ACT’s this morning, which those who had driven past Granny White this morning would know by the hundreds of cars in the parking lot which would be amiss any other Saturday in summer. As the hundreds of students funneled through the only entrance in the entire school that was “ACT kosher” we were directed down the long, dusty halls to our testing proctor who scrutinized our identification papers with more rigorous inspection than the Soviets guarding the Berlin Wall.

We were hustled down the long A hall and corralled into classroom by alphabetical order. The proctors rechecked our ID’s and testing tickets again, just in case one of us had magically teleported into the classroom, then sat us down in rows of desks.
“Please surrender electronic devices to the proctor,” The teacher in the front read curtly from the front of the room. “Any students found possessing any of the following devises: cell phones, pagers, stopwatches, timers, or will be dismissed from the testing area and their testing materials will be destroyed.”

A wave of students pulled out their dozens of cell phones and iPods and sat them on the teacher’s desk. I saw her eyes widen a bit at the sheer number of electronics before she directed the students to remove the batteries from their gadgets (because all of us apparently know how to remotely activate our cellphone spider robots to google answers for use then transmit information via Morse code…).
We all sat down and after half an hour more of hearing the numerous ways our behavior would have us excommunicated and our precious tests incinerated, we were given our testing booklet. I opened the book with trepidation, seeing the columns of tiny writing and questions purposely designed to trick feckless students. I prayed a bit, got out my lucky pencil, and began marking the bubbles. As I came close to the end of the Reading Comprehension, I made a horrifying discovery. I had accidentally skipped question 3 and all my bubbles were one wrong on my Scantron.
“Oh Sweet Strawberry Crêpes!” I whispered in horror as I saw the five minute mark rapidly slip towards me. I gazed in dismay at my test sheet as I frantically erased all my marks.
“You have five minutes left.” The proctor announced unhelpfully.
I gnashed my teeth and feverishly bubbled in haphazard smudgy dots, only glancing at the smeared marks I left in my wake.
“One minute left.” The proctor declared.
“Geuh!” I silently screamed, 20 questions left!
I scribbled in marks, almost blind to their placement in my frenzied terror. “Must finish test!!” My mind cried!
“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4…” The proctor counted down.
My pencil flew to the last five question, marking desperately with graphite the final bubbles.
“TIME!” The teacher called, “Put down your pencils and close the test booklet!”
“YES!” I crowed in my mind, doing a small fist-pump. All 70 of the questions filled out and corrected. I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes. So much drama and terror in a moment was physically and psychologically draining, but I had a victorious, abet somewhat exhausted grin on my face.
“I see you’ve all finished Test 1,” The proctor chirped cheerfully, “Only four more to go!”