One of many reasons why I love the 1st Amendment is that I can talk about all my annoyances and the people who personify them. Today's annoyance is unnatural arrogance, embodied by a singular person in Algebra II. Ahem-hem; here we go.
Dear you,
Your progress in achieving normality has been somewhat stunted recently; your sense of humor has not improved much either. You're extremely precocious, and I know this well — in fact so well, that I can hear it oozing out of your mouth with every word you say, especially when you remark under your breath about how stupid we are every day in seventh period. You lean back against the chalkboard, sometimes drowning yourself in a book, or stare past our teacher towards the stark white cinder-block walls. While the rest of us listen intently, which still won't help anyone get anything higher than a C in the class, you roll your eyes and try cute humor — which is neither cute nor humorous, but remarkably annoying — to change the topic to better fit you. There was a day a week or two back when you brought a college Calculus book to class with every intent of reading it in front of us. Now, I'm entirely unconvinced that you consider that literature; I believe, instead, that you brought it simply to spite us. Look what I can do!
Show off poorly? I'm all ears. The next time you want to use weight and height as a marker of intellect, bring a dog or an elephant, maybe even Anna Karenina. God knows Tolstoy was a master at creating convoluted works that take significant patience — and intelligence — to enjoy.
Now, this would be an easier situation to handle if, perhaps, you weren't so flighty. Because you're intelligent — I've never denied it, only the validity of your insistence to display it at any and every interval — you believe that you can push aside boulders and skip whole stages of your life until you get to the end of it, and wonder where it all went; in fact, that's likely how it will end up for you, if you continue to ignore what's going on around you. You only get one chance (unless you're like _______, and talented at repeating grades), and here you are about to throw it all away. Most people wade through high school simply to get to their senior year, and you won't even have that opportunity because you don't want it.
But you need it; regardless of what you say, you're not emotionally capable of handling college with your fickleness and lack of respect for education. In fact, you don't seem that capable at all; intelligence is useless if you do not use it.
Sincerely,
Me
In more interesting news, today's my brother's birthday — he's 25, and practically a doctor, so you can always e-mail him with your crazy medical conditions and get diagnoses before you die. If you're lucky. And then, there's the SAT, the exam I was entirely scared of before I made a list of my favorite colleges (in order, they are: Rice, Brown, Trinity (San Antonio), Oberlin, Northeastern, Washington University (St. Louis), UT, University of Pennsylvania — notice that I didn't choose (most of) them on account of their respective websites).
Here begins the tale of my daring escape from the small intestine of Houston (Galveston has claimed the title of "Bowels" for several years, and I can do nothing but comply with their demands):
We drove into downtown Houston at around 7:30 AM, and I took the liberty of admiring the enormous differences between the outer city and the city center. The outer city is barren and bare while the center glimmers with elegant skyscrapers and shops. The further you go from the center, the more disturbing the view gets. There's really no beauty in Houston, not on the long and lonely stretches of highway where the only signs of life come from adult video stores, cabarets, and gas stations/restaurants. The slums, with their enormous homeless population, barred shops, and populated underpasses, make me wonder why I adore Houston as much as I do. Houston, with all its vices, still has the Rockets, Space Center, familiar landmarks, and enough nostalgia to make up for its failings. You have to keep your mind balanced with pleasant things when you make a trek into downtown Houston; you might end up permanently losing a little bit of your composure if you're as critical as I am.
While looking for my testing center in the midst of an enormous amount of early-morning-Houston-fog, my dad turned onto a block with an ugly building with boarded up windows, broken glass, and cracking paint which solicitors had taken the liberty of replacing with old advertisements. In fact, he circled around this building, and it was only on the second time that I saw the sign — Mental Health Mental Retardation Association.
I took a minute to think before opening my mouth to try and convince my dad that that really wasn't my testing center, but he found his bearings the second we came back to the main street. Now that would have been a bit weird. Hey guys, I almost took my SAT inside a condemned mental-health building! Wheeeee!
And now, the necessary informational section of this post:
Standardized tests are inherently bowels-y
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
—Will Durant
Texas is dumb. Dumb dumb dumb.
I think the entire purpose of the TAKS examination is to see if you can make marks with a pencil; if you have any cognitive function at all, you should be able to pass it, but this is, sadly, not always the case.
Study-ability: None, unless you have a history of failing parts of the test.
Experience: Since it's designed to showcase the bare minimum of Texan skills, there's nothing exciting about the TAKS exam. I remember that I loved how the exam's border and logo changed colors every year, but even that has fallen into a garbage can I use for useless memories. Most everyone is done within two hours of taking the exam (which spans three days, but pretty much takes up the week), but then there are always people testing until well after the end of the school day, so we sit around in our classrooms with relatively nothing to do. It's also hard to sleep well during the TAKS because the sheer stupidity of the exam leaves you absolutely drooling all over your desk — a surprisingly common event.
You want money? I give money!
I stressed about the PSAT for months and months, because both of my brothers had qualified for the National Merit Scholarship as a result of it. And money is money, you know. It's not something I can simply shuck aside. So, in preparation, I had my dad buy me some software — quite possibly the most annoying piece of software I have ever had the misfortune of using. I believe they still use midis to store their music, because it sounds terrible. If you leave the sound effects on, you'll hear breaking glass and very loud whispers that can creep you out within seconds. I'm sorry, but if that's supposed to represent a proper testing environment, Kaplan needs to understand that not every test is taken inside of a ghetto-type establishment.
Study-ability: I worked for quite a while, and my grade went up about twenty points; it's not enough to earn any scholarship money, but a fairly good score nonetheless. I refuse to give any credit to the software because I hate it.
Experience: Fast-paced, quick, but I felt as though I wasn't able to try hard enough on the Math section because it went by so quickly.
The test to end all tests. Almost
The SAT has a history of attracting controversy (it's rumored that the test is biased), but that doesn't make it particularly difficult. Because I took the test today, I can't divulge any of the details, unless I want some sort of ninja breaking through my window and killing me. I can't fight off a ninja without a ray-gun, and twenty years worth of warning.
Study-ability: I took two practice tests yesterday, and played one vocabulary game which, like the software it was a part of, was fairly stupid. That's it. It's not as if you can necessarily study for either the PSAT or SAT. You simply have to practice your reasoning abilities, and your speed. On the SAT, make sure that you:
- Bubble your answers as you circle them in your workbook. You'll need time at the end of the section (when you would normally be bubbling) to review your answers, and it's easier to read them from the answer document.
- Practice taking the test until you can have about five-ten minutes at the end of each section to review. Without it, you'll be grasping the air for answers in those final minutes
- Do not forget your calculator, for the love of god!
- Use the answers given to answer math problems. Start with the middle answer and work outwards, since answers are always listed from smallest to largest.
Experience: I like being able to read passages and gain something from them; the passages this year were both stimulating and good reads. That, and drawing on the last page of most of the ten sections, kept me out of the comatose state I would have experienced if I had been completely lost, or, say, in the middle of the TAKS test.
Do I have to do all of this crap?
Well, most of it. But of course, you can always skip out on all this jargon, buy some pigs, and live a happy life in the hill country with Mexican mountain-men — that's one of many options in merry old Texas.
Read 6 comments (Leave a comment?)
Mithraugion said:
Well, even though this has nothing to do with you at this point, Texas legislators are planning to do away with the TAKS now and replace it with a more “in-depth” test. Pshaw, I think. Any standardized test can’t be very “in-depth”… At least in grade school.
I honestly don’t care much for Houston at all. I was born elsewhere and that’s where I want to end up. Houston’s highways are too twisted. And you brought up a good point. In all its glamour, there’s a lot of crummy parts here. I guess it’s slightly better out in the “outer limits” where we live.
Why did you go there to test anyway? Did you register late?
If that person were so bent on showing his “superiority”, he’d put a little more effort in his damn work.
In some cases, I can see where a High School graduation would not be important (trade careers - still important in society - and well… McDonalds.), but this guy just seems like one of those people who will be scamming people on the intersection of I-45 and El Dorado…
Posted on March 10, 2007 9:12 PM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
It’s a she, first, but I didn’t feel that the distinction was necessary; I can let people fill in their own person if I leave it blank.
And yes, I registered late! I decided against taking it at Clear Brook (a major test in a cafeteria? Ick! That’s about as bad as when they make us take the National Latin Exam in the auditorium), and I couldn’t find San Jacinto South on the center list, so I picked something that sounded kinda cool.
I think she’ll find a very well-paying job somewhere, but I doubt she’ll stay anywhere for long. She’ll probably never be very content with her life because she loves to keep moving, which is distressing to me. But when you have so much of your youth left, why waste it?
Posted on March 10, 2007 11:38 PM; Permalink
Mithraugion said:
See, I tend to think guys are more arrogant, and hence the pronoun. Not to mention, when gender is ambiguous, the pronoun is typically “he” as opposed to “he/she” or “she”.
And I took it in the cafeteria. Wasn’t all that bad.
Posted on March 11, 2007 12:33 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Yeah, but I don’t like the cafeteria on normal days. I’ve been eating outside as often as possible. I took my NLE in there once, and I just can’t imagine taking my SAT in there.
Posted on March 11, 2007 11:33 AM; Permalink
Gemma said:
Sorry that this is a little off topic but hey, bless you! I didn’t know that you had tried to sign up to TLA with me as a referrer!
Thank you for that and the lovely comment on my jewellery, I’m just so pleased that you like them : )
Gem x
Posted on March 17, 2007 11:58 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Tried, at least. They’re not very good about reading their messages :(
Your jewelry’s really very pretty! Hopefully, I’ll get to buy some at some point.
Posted on March 17, 2007 8:02 PM; Permalink