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Stress, college, G&T education, ranting
Jul. 30th, 2002 12:35 pmAd Exteriore Mundo,
I got the MIT application in the mail yesterday afternoon, along with this huge pamphlet listing all the supposedly great and wonderful things about the college. It actually sounds like a school where I'd fit in pretty well--obsessed with computers, malicious sense of humor, science-and-math-oriented. But then, I decided to wind up my courage and read through the Harvard brochure. O_O If I get accepted there--and most people seem to think I have a good chance although one never knows, does one?--I'm going to be even more stressed out than I am at HPTF. First of all, they have way too many courses that sound like ones that I want to take and not enough courses per semester to take them in. Second of all, they have way too many clubs, including four Model UN, which I wanted to continue in college, and I'm either going to end up joining too many or none at all. Third of all, I'll probably end up with a work-study plan, which means I'm going to have a part-time job during the school year. Fourth of all, everyone knows college homework is going to take even more time than high school homework, even if the high school is HPTF. Fifth of all, I was going to learn two languages and computer programming on my own free time at college, a plan that I am apparently going to have to scratch if I want to keep my sanity.
These are ridiculous things to stress out about, and it doesn't apply to Harvard specifically. I'm going to have to worry about these things no matter what college I go to. However, there are certain differences. There might be less Model UN organizations at a smaller university. Other colleges may offer more courses per semester (Caltech does, in fact) and more grants as opposed to work-study programs (namely, Princeton). Nevertheless, the fact that I won't be able to do everything that I want to do in college, and the fact that college is probably the last time that I'll be able to do most of these things, has come as a shock to me. Which leads me to my Rant on G&T Education (TM).
If they hadn't spent so many years repeating the same material over and over again in elementary and middle school, we could have learned much more quickly, and presumably, have more time to learn more. If they had allowed us to learn foreign languages (more than one) in elementary, just like they used to do in the past centuries, then we would not only have known more languages more fluently but also have the opportunity to learn obscure ones like Assyrian now in high school. If they had covered global history over a span of three or four consecutive years in greater detail, we wouldn't be missing out if we can't take the detailed look at Asian or Islamic civilizations in college. In fact, we could have covered a lot of elementary college material if we could have started taking AP courses in, say, seventh grade.
High school right now is tough and challenging, yeah, I admit it, but if we hadn't been so slow in elementary school, then we could have handled this material in middle school. Okay, I know that this statement does not apply universally, but it does apply to most G&T (gifted and talented) students. And truthfully, school isn't hard because what we're learning is difficult. It's hard because we have trouble time-managing all the papers and projects. The tests are nit-picky, but most of us understand the subject as long as we've tried to pay attention in class. Some classes go at a decent pace, but others are just slow. They're not boring, but they waste all the time that I could spend on a more advanced level course or a different subject altogether. Think of all the things that we don't have a chance to learn. Not just Assyrian, but patterns of river drainage from a mountain or non-Euclidean geometry.
Okay, I know a lot of my friends think that we're forced to learn too much irrelevant stuff in school to begin with. And if you have a specific career or at least academic field of interest, then sure, that makes sense. I'm just complaining that the people at the opposite end of the spectrum, the ones that want to learn as much irrelevant stuff as possible, don't get heard in the halls of education theory either. The politicians babble on and on about raising test scores and other such nonsense, but they don't realize that the reason why the children in other countries score better on tests is not only because we don't have enough vouchers or funding or whatever, but also because we don't learn as much material. Standardized tests in Asia and Europe are a whole level above College Board exams, and the kids have to learn more to cope with them. I'm not saying that I have a magic formula for the problem of education in our country, but I am complaining about the fact that too many of the most intelligent students are denied the opportunity to fill their potential. Because they are already performing at a "good enough" level, people think it's all right. But if they are capable of doing more but don't because there aren't enough educational opportunities, then there's a problem with the system.
Sure, children need time to play and enjoy their lives when they are kids, but the way I see it, precious few do that anyway. So why not at least make that time constructive and useful? You know, that's why the Battle School really captures our minds. It's a terrible school to go to, but kids want to anyway. It's not just the battleroom that provides the allure. It's the idea of a school that doesn't underestimate the intelligence of the students, that expects the students to be smarter than most adults, that challenges them to their utter limits rather than being satisfied with mediocrity.
Whew, that's over with. Now back to combing these BLAST results and trying very hard not to shove the Mac onto the ground.
...Tari
I got the MIT application in the mail yesterday afternoon, along with this huge pamphlet listing all the supposedly great and wonderful things about the college. It actually sounds like a school where I'd fit in pretty well--obsessed with computers, malicious sense of humor, science-and-math-oriented. But then, I decided to wind up my courage and read through the Harvard brochure. O_O If I get accepted there--and most people seem to think I have a good chance although one never knows, does one?--I'm going to be even more stressed out than I am at HPTF. First of all, they have way too many courses that sound like ones that I want to take and not enough courses per semester to take them in. Second of all, they have way too many clubs, including four Model UN, which I wanted to continue in college, and I'm either going to end up joining too many or none at all. Third of all, I'll probably end up with a work-study plan, which means I'm going to have a part-time job during the school year. Fourth of all, everyone knows college homework is going to take even more time than high school homework, even if the high school is HPTF. Fifth of all, I was going to learn two languages and computer programming on my own free time at college, a plan that I am apparently going to have to scratch if I want to keep my sanity.
These are ridiculous things to stress out about, and it doesn't apply to Harvard specifically. I'm going to have to worry about these things no matter what college I go to. However, there are certain differences. There might be less Model UN organizations at a smaller university. Other colleges may offer more courses per semester (Caltech does, in fact) and more grants as opposed to work-study programs (namely, Princeton). Nevertheless, the fact that I won't be able to do everything that I want to do in college, and the fact that college is probably the last time that I'll be able to do most of these things, has come as a shock to me. Which leads me to my Rant on G&T Education (TM).
If they hadn't spent so many years repeating the same material over and over again in elementary and middle school, we could have learned much more quickly, and presumably, have more time to learn more. If they had allowed us to learn foreign languages (more than one) in elementary, just like they used to do in the past centuries, then we would not only have known more languages more fluently but also have the opportunity to learn obscure ones like Assyrian now in high school. If they had covered global history over a span of three or four consecutive years in greater detail, we wouldn't be missing out if we can't take the detailed look at Asian or Islamic civilizations in college. In fact, we could have covered a lot of elementary college material if we could have started taking AP courses in, say, seventh grade.
High school right now is tough and challenging, yeah, I admit it, but if we hadn't been so slow in elementary school, then we could have handled this material in middle school. Okay, I know that this statement does not apply universally, but it does apply to most G&T (gifted and talented) students. And truthfully, school isn't hard because what we're learning is difficult. It's hard because we have trouble time-managing all the papers and projects. The tests are nit-picky, but most of us understand the subject as long as we've tried to pay attention in class. Some classes go at a decent pace, but others are just slow. They're not boring, but they waste all the time that I could spend on a more advanced level course or a different subject altogether. Think of all the things that we don't have a chance to learn. Not just Assyrian, but patterns of river drainage from a mountain or non-Euclidean geometry.
Okay, I know a lot of my friends think that we're forced to learn too much irrelevant stuff in school to begin with. And if you have a specific career or at least academic field of interest, then sure, that makes sense. I'm just complaining that the people at the opposite end of the spectrum, the ones that want to learn as much irrelevant stuff as possible, don't get heard in the halls of education theory either. The politicians babble on and on about raising test scores and other such nonsense, but they don't realize that the reason why the children in other countries score better on tests is not only because we don't have enough vouchers or funding or whatever, but also because we don't learn as much material. Standardized tests in Asia and Europe are a whole level above College Board exams, and the kids have to learn more to cope with them. I'm not saying that I have a magic formula for the problem of education in our country, but I am complaining about the fact that too many of the most intelligent students are denied the opportunity to fill their potential. Because they are already performing at a "good enough" level, people think it's all right. But if they are capable of doing more but don't because there aren't enough educational opportunities, then there's a problem with the system.
Sure, children need time to play and enjoy their lives when they are kids, but the way I see it, precious few do that anyway. So why not at least make that time constructive and useful? You know, that's why the Battle School really captures our minds. It's a terrible school to go to, but kids want to anyway. It's not just the battleroom that provides the allure. It's the idea of a school that doesn't underestimate the intelligence of the students, that expects the students to be smarter than most adults, that challenges them to their utter limits rather than being satisfied with mediocrity.
Whew, that's over with. Now back to combing these BLAST results and trying very hard not to shove the Mac onto the ground.
...Tari
