In my school we have Am. History Part one (Pres. Washington to Pres. Grant) freshman year. Sophomore year is Am. History Part 2 (Pres. McKinley to Pres. G. W. Bush - we skip Pres. Hayes to Pres. Cleveland for some reason). Junior year is world cultures. Senior year is Am Govt.

yes we do have Psychology and Sociology. they are separate courses each one quater long and electives - you don't have to take them. (They are only quater courses because my school has block scheduling and therefore a quarter equals a semester.) You can take them as a junior or senior. i'm hoping to take them next year. there are also (obviously) other electives to choose from.

Funny in my school.. I started out with World History, then American Studies 1 then American Studies 2 and then any social studies elective after that. But that's when I was a freshmen, they're actually changing it to the way you have it now.

Ugh, renovations... Our school is like going under massive renovations and it's so annoying. All you hear is the banging of the hammer or the squeaking of the wheels when the construction guys are carrying things back and forth between class rooms. So far they've finished one classroom, and a teacher's room. They still need to finish the band/chorus/music room. It should be done by the end of the week. Now they're working on the ISS room and the room next to it. And pretty much all the class rooms have these cement floors because they ripped out the tiling over the summer and never got to putting new ones on. I guess we had like asbestos in the floors or something. I don't know. But they still need to fix them.

AND now the track and football field can be worked on again because the snow is starting to melt. We actually have a track laid out!!!

Oh school looks like one big construction sites with all the ladders around and wires.

I know what it's like to be in a school during construction. My school was under construction my freshman year. We had to go outside because so of the hallways were blocked off.

Your snow is just now starting to melt?!?! That is so not fair. There hasn't been snow down here since mid-Feb. and then the snow only lasted one day. you have no idea how lucky you are.

This week is PSSA testing week at my school (and I think everywhere in PA). The PSSA is a standardized test that everyone has to take and pass in order to graduate. They are so pointless and a waste of time and brain power. The testing started on Tuesday and goes to next Tuesday. It is very annoying, although thankfully, not challenging.

Emi-- We've been having lots of rain here, and the entire counselor's office got flooded because they have bad windows...all the carpet's ripped up and it's an absolute mess. At least it doesn't smell gross anymore.

I really don't think people read enough. We had a vocabulary quiz on And Then There Were None, and (mostly) everyone found it hard. To make it even worse, it was a fill in the blanks quiz, and the quotes were taken directly from the book - which we had to finish reading for that same day.
Another big annoyance is that no one uses emphasis correctly - plus, they don't know that you have to put real emphasis while using italics. So what ended up happening was that I read it properly - after trying to endure hearing them sound like they don't know English - and they started laughing because of the way I emphasised it properly.
Onto more happy news, the book was amazing - contrary to my primary belief of "Who cares about the death of criminals? It's less work for the police", now it's more along the lines of "What an ingenious (and sadistic) mystery novel".

And I'll end this with something other than that of English: I'm finally done with learning Excel (my mom the Office teacher showed me more than my school teacher ...) and the pretend stock market. The real stock market project will be in sec. 4 (Gr.10) or 5 (Gr. 11) (secondary, as in high school - no middle school in Canada) When we make companies (or take real ones, I'm not sure), sell shares to everyone in high school, and later on sell stuff (brownies, fajitas, smoothies... many diuerse choices). It's non-profit, so the kids get back the same or usually more money, and the rest goes to charity.

Um So I have this wicked cool project I have to do in Psychology... Make meatballs. Haha. Yeah I'm serious. You see we are working with partners. One person makes something from scratch and the other makes that same food from like the box, or frozen. I'm making frozen meatballs and my partner S is making homemade cuz she works at an italien restarant. You know I just spelt Italian the French way... Oh well...

And another project in that class is that we have to make a collage with things that we think represent the American Culture. It's pretty fun. We were pretty much cutting out things from magazines all day.

UM. I'm almost nearing vacation. Like three more days. YAY. Not going to do anything! Haha. Oh well...

Really? My vacation started on Friday. Well, I guess it's different because mine was for Passover, (wikipedia for more info - I'm no good at explaining things) and, it'll only be for a week. Still, I'm lucky that I go to a Jewish school because the year is full of holidays when I can stay home, as opposed to cégep and university.
I wish I had fun projects.

Mm my friend is doing Passover too, but she still comes to school and stuff. That's got to be wicked tough, trying to remember all the food you CAN'T eat. Bet you're used to it by now though...

Today I got to go outside and people watch for my Psychology class... we walked to the center of our town (it's like ten minutes walking from my school) and we ate lunch and people watched. I think I might have obtained a small tan. Yes. All my "friends" (aquaintances, but I wanted to make it sound like I actually have friends) are playing spring sports so they have tans. Mmm... Seems like my psychology class is cool and we do a bunch of stuff but this week's the only week we're actually doing something besides taking notes.

Well off to work!!!

Ah, school... The curse I brought upon myself, but if I can convince myself that school is going to drive me MAD I'm not going back for grade 8.

I have a science project that's due on the 28th... Guess how much work I have done? TRANSLATING THE STUFF TO PUT ON MY DISPLAY. See, I'm in French Immersion, so the project has to be in French. I have to make the display, AND make a robot, to have done on the 28th. Said project is worth HALF MY FINAL MARK ON MY REPORT CARD. And this isn't even counting my OTHER stuff... English speech, art project, math homework EVERY DAY... I'm also a lazy bum, so I'm floundering.

I've also only been in school since grade 6. I think I prefer homeschooling/unschooling a LOT more. I've decided school is complete insanity and is not helping me with keeping my sanity.

Am I alone in the whole fellow-female-classmates-trying-to-play-matchmaker-for-me thing, or is that pretty common? It's pretty darn irritating.

It's common for everyone, no matter gender...Or perhaps my experiances are more from females trying to play matchmaker for other females, and simply drawing me into it as a result...(Also ahrd to say who's being serious)
When guys do it, it tends not to be for serious relationships...

All i know is I had a girl's friends tell me how nice the girl is, and complimenting her looks, drawing me aside to talk to me....*thinks i can see how that could get annoying, no matter my gender*

And making you insane is MY job. (Sacred right of the fake big brother, and all.) Tell school to stop encroaching upon my territory!

I don't mind school, particularly, myself...I'll take a break when i can get it, and i'll try to think of reasons for the teachers to give us less work than possible, but i never really expect that to work, and i don't particularly care. I do my work, and that's all there is too it...SOme of its long, but not much of it is that much of a challenge, for the most part. (I'm writing most of a three page essay today, for example, though most of the class did it over a week. Double spaced, easy as anything.) School doesn't bug me. (Which is good, since i can be as lazy as Mousey sometimes...) The only reason i even bother to complain about my work is that i feel it's my duty as a teenager ot at least TRY and get out of it. :P

Mousey: Homeschooling/unschooling rocks! Did you choose to go to public school, or did your parents make you?

And also, the "fellow-female-classmates-trying-to-play-matchmaker" thing isn't only common at schools, all the really 'girly' girls at my church are obsessed with it. I'm getting annoyed with it, though (unless I'm helping them... ). They haven't tried setting me up with anyone, thankfully.

KK: I chose. I have NO idea why...

Kevin: Yes, driving me insane is your job. Driving you insane is my job. And yes, I am lazy.

Well, there I go again with my ultimate procrastination abilities. Time to do my "texte expressif" in French for tomorrow - or should I say today (it's 12:28AM right now)? Luckily (as usual), I have time to finish it at lunch, since my class is afterwards. I really have no idea how I manage to not fail any courses. Plus, with an added bonus (sarcasm, sarcasm, sarcasm), everyone has the false impression that I'm a really smart person (I'm slightly below average)...

You never came off as below average to me....
And the simple fact of the matter is, you don't have to be intelligent in day to day life-you just have to SEEM intelligent, and everyone will ignore any evidence to say otherwise...I don't have to get all nineties. I just have to read books, show a few nineties, and people will THINK i do. (The only class i almost ALWAYS get above ninety on for tests is American History.)

Yesterday was a lot of fun. GES (Gifted Education Services) went to Mizzou for a presentation and college tour. Their campus is lovely...I didn't really want to go there, but now I'm considering it because it's SUCH a good school. It also has a really good atmosphere, though with tiny dorms. I don't know if it would be any different in a suite, because we only saw the community style dorms. Anyway, their library is the biggest in Missouri, which is awesome, and they have a fantastic journalism program. I still don't know what I want to do, but it might be journalism. Hm.

Anyway, it was lots of fun except for the way back, when this extremely conceited and annoying guy kept bothering me...I finally had to shove him out of my seat to get him to leave me alone. Orange was him, red was me. Obviously.

Also, I have a quiz tomorrow on the first 21 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In that spirit, here they are:

1- Right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
2- Right to bear arms.
3- No quartering of troops in private homes.
4- No unreasonable searches and seizures.
5- Rights of the accused: due process, no double jeopardy, no self-incrimination
6- Right to a fair, speedy trial by jury
7- Right to a jury in a civil suit
8- No excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment.
9- Rights not listed in the Constitution are reserved for the people.
10- Powers not listed in the Constitution are reserved for the states.
11- Trials against states must be held in state, not federal, courts.
12- Electors must cast separate ballots for president and vice president.
13- Slavery is abolished.
14- Citizenship cannot be denied on basis of race; due process.
15- African-American men have the right to vote.
16- Congress may tax income.
17- The power to elect senators is transferred from the state legislators to the people.
18- All manufacture, purchase, and distribution of alcohol is prohibited.
19- Women have the right to vote.
20- Lame duck amendment: The time between the election and inauguration of the president is shortened.
21- Repealed the 18th amendment.

I'm going to do well!!! Unlike the quiz I had today on 1-14...I was gone and my teacher didn't tell me there would be a quiz, so I only knew 1-7 and I failed. Oh well.

My american history class doens't make me do nearly as much...of course, my good grades in there might be because of how the class started-I had this teacher last year, for global, and when he became our teacher (we didn't have a real history teacher orriginally) he immediately told the class that i get all A's. Period...Which wasn't always true last year (I almost always had ninetey five) but after he said that, i had no recourse BUT to get all A's. :P (With a few small exceptions. Either way, i've yet to drop below an A in his class on my report card all year, so...*cheers*)

We don't even memorize dates in his class though. A few names, some ideas of the time, what was going on...Maybe a date or two pops up, but never anything i went out of my way to memorize, with maybe an exception i don't remember. The guy gives us questions from AP questions, as well as regents. (Standerdized test that exists ONLY in new york)


My last bad test in there was a sevnety five, (Which was actually the best in the class, hence the re do he gave us, with a different test i got a 98 on. :P)

quote:

Originally posted by young reader:
You never came off as below average to me....
I don't have to get all nineties. I just have to read books, show a few nineties, and people will THINK i do.

Yeah, I mentioned it somewhere - I always have my book with me. The thing is, I show people my bad marks, and they still think I'm smart. What's really funny is this one person in my class who occasionally asks me to "send her my brainwaves" before a test or quiz.

I don't know what class I'm best in, but I certainly like English. Plus, I read a lot, so I know a lot more than everyone else in that class. It's too bad though (haha, not really - which relates to my Jewish History teacher from last year*); we just started learning about Greek mythology, and we had a quiz to know their names, their roman equals, their symbols and their jobs, and I made a stupid mistake - writing the greek name instead of the roman name, so I got 9/10, while everyone else got a lot worse. I could have gotten perfect if I had reread it, but oh well.
*My teacher from last year said twice "I'm very sad, Joe (not my real name), that..." And he said it with a sad expression, but then "...you only needed 2 more percent to have a perfect mark".

And, to join in the discussion, in my regular History class (in *ugh* French), we learn some dates, but we mostly just learn a really summarized version of what happened. So, right now we're learning about the industrial era, and the laws of working children , like they can't do work that's bad for their health, and so on.
And then geography, where we don't even know where our own provinces are, since we're too busy learning about Inuits, and the problem of water running out.

Oh, and I almost forgot. In French, we're doing a play Chinese-style (behind the curtains so you only see shadows) on Le Petit Prince (I think I lost some brain cells while reading that, with the constant headaches).

even if you get bad marks, people will still think you always get good marks, because they'll block out everything else...Kids LIKE having a smart kid in the class. Some of those smart kids might be teesaesed, but it often seems that it's kind of a novelty to them, having someone in class who seems to know all the answers...I try to know all the answers, and get all good grades, but sometimes i DO mess up.
Doesn't really matter to the kids, though, because after a few moments of shock they obbliterate it from their minds so that they can act shocked the next time i mess up as well...(It helps that this year i havne't really messed up, at all...But I know that even if i did, they'd block it out so that they could continue ranting) One of my friends seemed to think i was going to challange him to be valedictorian last year...Which is a good goal, but somehow i never quite made it there.

At my friend's school, there was an assignment to write about the interests of a close friends, and she decided to write about me.

She said it was funny, because after she finished talking about all the work on computers, and all the reading and writing I did, and how much of an astronomy geek I was, three or four people asked her if they could meet me (and two of them did, eventually).

It felt really weird...

Hey that's pretty cool that your friend wrote about you though. I'd feel honored!

In my American Studies classes we never really memorized numbers. Except for the Battle of 1812... but that was a given. My teachers said that they hated having to memorized numbers when they were in HS so they decided to not add that as part of their curriculum. Makes everything easier for me... Although I do memorize numbers very well!

Kids in my grade EXPECT me to do well in class cuz I'm asian.... especially in math. How stereotypical! I AM good in math but that's because I really try hard in it.

I had to do my SAT's today. ALL FIVE HOURS of it. UGH, I hope I do well on that so I don't have to take it again next fall. That was pure TORTURE!!! They gave us like a few breaks in between sections but they were like five minute ones... and there was one one minute break! Haha... that was not cool.