sup Infonick. I hope God is watching over you in that awful place and that you will arrive back safely at home to be with your family again.
GSG maybe you should learn to follow the path of Infonick - i think the military would be very good for you, it would give you some structure in your life. It will teach you there is more to life than just what you think YOU deserve, but rather that all of your actions have consequences to everybody around you and sometimes what is best for everybody is not necessarily what is best for yourself.
Also yo Sinistral. How goes your studies? Please hurry up and invent a vaccine for all VD because I need it.
To everybody else, this Wednesday is the Chinese lunar new year, it is the largest holiday on Earth with over 2 billion people celebrating it. It is also the largest periodic human migration in the history of the world and if you don’t know anything about it then you should read about it here:
I’m going to Hawaii because chinese new year is too crazy for me, and it’s gonna be pretty awesome.
Well that’s it for now. Thank you all for reading my post I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
You have two choices: do your homework, or don’t do your homework. For some people, doing homework or even just the thought of it creates a lot of anxiety, which can be for a lot of different reasons. So your body leads you to ignore the homework. People who don’t experience that anxiety don’t understand it. It’s incredibly intense and very difficult to overcome.
School is designed to prepare you to get a job, support yourself financially, and benefit society in the process. If you have problems doing homework and hate it, you’re going to hate jobs with similar work, like office jobs or IT or whatnot, and you will most likely perform poorly in those scenarios as well. It sounds to me like you don’t mind manual labor - well, there you go, seems like writing on the wall. Get a job in a plant, be a machinist or a welder, do assembly, construction, throw boxes on a pallet…whatever - there’s tons of jobs that pay decent money that don’t require a degree. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a career choice that doesn’t require a diploma.
@Zep: things are great. I have my PhD, I’m wrapping up my clinical work for med school. Sadly, my patent may not be useful for your VD, unless its HPV or MAYBE herpes. I’d have to test. Wanna volunteer (jk)? Your chinese new year celebration sounds great. Enjoy Hawaii. How’s Singapore?
I agree with Zep that GSG should consider the military. Strongly.
@GSG and JV, these numbers speak for themselves:
Average Annual Earnings for College Graduates and Non-Graduates
Professional Degree (ie law, medicine)
$109,600
Doctoral Degree (ie PhD)
$89,400
Master’s Degree
$62,300
Bachelor’s Degree
$52,200
Associate’s Degree
$38,200
Some College
$36,800
High School Graduate
$30,400
Some High School
$23,400
Average Annual Earnings—Different Levels of Education.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Surveys, March 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Everyone knows the more education you have, the more money you are likely to make. That’s why I earned an MBA (it certainly wasn’t for the “knowledge”). My point is some people aren’t cut out to earn Bachelor’s degrees and work in an office, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As far as advice to the OP about getting a high school diploma, I don’t have an opinion either way because he didn’t provide any details about the situation (that make any sense). In general, my thoughts are go as far as you can. But if you’re struggling, at some point you need to have a reality check and choose a career path that is a fit for who you really are.
I grew up with one of the worst cases of ADHD ever known to man. Seriously, my doctor wrote several papers on my inability to focus on anything, especially schoolwork. The only reason I did as well as I did in school was because I had a natural intelligence that only somewhat offset the lack of studying. I hated to do it, I couldn’t do it. But when I did, there was a definite improvement in my grades. I remember more from Math and English classes, ones I studied for, than I ever did for Science classes, which I only ever crammed for. I still remember using the reward system long after it was probably good for me - The promise of Final Fantasy Anthology when it first came out was the only thing that got me to pass seventh grade with a Low B average and only one mental breakdown.
Eventually, due to my collection of disabilities I like to call my “Psychocktail,” I was placed in an alternative high school. The education was not as advanced as the one in my first high school, and I would suffer for that later. But it helped me better because it taught me more applicable courses for living on my own, and study methods that meant when I took advanced classes like Criminal Justice (actual college course-levels offered to high school students) I managed to succeed in them. I didn’t ace them, but I didn’t fail or squeak by, either.
Now, working on my Dramaturgy degree in college, I have taken far longer than it normally does to get to the point that I am at. Part of it was me adapting because I accept I cannot handle a 15-credit courseload that easily, but a large part of it is also because I never really was pushed to my limits and learned study skills later in life. I still put everything off to the last minute, and need to force myself away from every possible distraction, and just work on this. And that is what you do, too. I know you said that ISS didn’t do much for you, but there is no greater study area than the one with no distractions. It’s why I have two computers - the one I’m typing on now, and my work computer, which is an old, OLD piece of shit from the school. It has no sound card. It has no video drivers. It doesn’t even have solitaire on it. All it’s good for is writing word documents and e-mailing them.
In short? You got to do it, so you need to sit down and find out what it takes to best make you study. Whatever it takes.
You guys have this image of some ADD infested fuckup who doesn’t give a shit about school for me. That isn’t it at all. I enjoy learning every little thing there is to know about anything. I record every word that comes out of my biology teacher’s mouth and don’t stop thinking about how the universe works until something more interesting comes up. I lay in bed at night wondering about all the different elements and how they interact with each other to make the world around us. I just don’t like doing busywork, and now I realize that was my only problem the whole time. I don’t like it, and I have a bad attitude about it. I just had an ego problem in the end.
So what is my plan now? I certainly won’t join the military, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. I’m not going to go risk my life to kill people for some classist fatass in an office building. I am going to sit through the rest of school (just for the hell of it), then I am getting my GED, a license to drive, and a shit level job until I have some sort of cash. Finally I plan on moving down to california to be homeless with a few friends I know. That is the life I want, free. What about when I get old? I dunno, I’ll figure it out on the way. I know this is largely a stupid idea, I can see into the future. I’m not some naive kid…well maybe I am, but won’t it be fun to see my innocence in shattered pieces all over the ground in some ally while I shoot up with some needle I got from the other homeless guy next to me? It’s okay, he promised he is clean.
I never said you were ADD. Hell, I figured if you were, you would say it, because most people who have it know it. I was sharing how I, as being clinically diagnosed with the disorder, meant I had to try even harder than most to sit down and study.
Putting aside that very loaded statement about the military (and how being in the military doesn’t necessarily mean you will see combat), that really is the lazy way out. What’s sad is, I bet that is exactly what will happen to you, so… good luck with that.
And seriously, don’t bother trying to justify yourself now in your goals or work ethic. You acknowledge that you had an ego/work ethic problem, and that’s great. But if you don’t, you know, FOLLOW UP ON FIXING IT, then so what?
'Sup zep. Not much going on here. Have a regular job and health insurance and stuff. Working for evil corporate America and all that. Hope you’re having an awesome year.
So to address your original question I don’t believe that assigning homework and grading it is what’s wrong with the American education system.
I think the bigger issues surround that teachers aren’t paid enough, there are too many administrators in charge of schools, people keep trying to treat schools like a business in which they expect a profit, the gov’t keeps cutting funds from schools, people have low expectations of students, Texas publishes some stupid textbooks, textbooks cost too much, teachers are thrown into their jobs with very little training and mentoring, teachers who have specialties in certain areas are asked to teach entirely different subjects, teachers who have been at the their job too long lose their enthusiasm for teaching and learning, etc.
Honestly whenever I teach I try get across the fact that homework is a really important process of learning. You can watch me do problems on the board all day, but until you sit down with your textbook and start reading and doing the work for yourself you’re never going to really understand what you’re doing. The more you do something right, the better you get at it.
“Every little thing”? Or just big concepts that have crazy implications and make for fun dinner conversation? I’ve known guys who love pseudo-science, love speculating about wormholes and time travel and genetic engineering, but have absolutely no patience to study these subjects like real scientists. Scientists suppress their desire for instant gratification, and it gradually transforms to an obsessive persistence at mind-numbing, mind-building research.
You could be homeless and free of responsibility, living for instant, meager gratification, but you would still “lay in bed at night wondering about all the different elements and how they interact.” Or, you could try at life. It’s not as easy as a video game, but it’s more rewarding. Who knows, if you actually put your heart into it, maybe you could teach kids science.
Hey Zep, you’ve become quite a patriot. GSG needs more of your Protestant work ethic. How’s China? It’s been awhile since your last traveler’s account.
Aparently you don’t know about New York State’s teachers’s union. They get paid a great salary, great benefits (plast surgery included), and they can’t be fired. Even if they don’t so shit! They were almost ready to start World War III when somebody with sense suggested link teacher’s salaries and student performance. It’s pretty much why the state’s going down the shitter (well that and the Medicaid abusers).
It’s true. The only reason businesses stay in NYC is that other businesses are there – the benefits of all being in one place. If they could all transplant themselves to Newark at once, they would.