Standardized Testing

Having just taken the Math MCA and the ACT, and being in the process of taking the Science MCA, I've had a lot of thinking to do about standardized testing, and have come to the conclusion that it's not always representative of what a student actually knows.

Let's take the ACT, for example. In my school district in particular, a majority of students preparing to take the ACT hire private tutors to teach them how to take the test. People who aren't fast readers are taught the skills to help them read a little faster to help them get through the test easier, which makes complete sense to me. Even the people who hire tutors to help them review materials they learned in previous years that they may have forgotten make sense. It's those who have tutors that teach them how to take the test. There are plenty of helpful tips for completing the ACT, including "every fourth question is a hard analysis one in the math section" and "go back to the contrasting viewpoints in the science section" (not that either of these is actually true, I completely made them up). 

In my opinion, to truly test a student's knowledge, and not how expensive of a tutor they can pay for, the test shouldn't be as predictable. The average ACT score at my high school is a 26.1, compared to the state average of 22.1, and the nationwide average of 21.1.Personally, I got a 33 going in and only reviewing for math for 3 days before the test, although if I'm being honest, I think I got pretty lucky guess-wise. After hitting my goal score on round 1, I decided to just be done with taking it, because it opens me up for plenty of scholarships in the future. 

On another note, the MCA's are intended to help districts get funding if their students do well on these comprehensive assessments, but they're very basic, baseline things for students to learn, and oftentimes aren't taken seriously at all.

Overall, the idea of standard testing to see where students rank against each other is a brilliant idea, I just think that in this day and age, its becoming less about how smart a student is, and more about how much work they put into studying and how much money they put into tutoring.

On a lighter note, if anyone's been having an awful week like I have, here's a few pictures of synchronized swimmers that are sure to cheer you up. (PS mad props to synchro I would never be able to do any of this...)

Obliteration

I recently read The Fault in our Stars by John Greene, which is quite honestly one of the most well-written books I've read in a long time. Hazel Grace (the main character) is a girl who suffers from cancer, but always refers to it almost flippantly, as if it's just a small aspect of her life. At one point during the novel, Hazel is at a support group for kids going through similar things, and this passage comes up: 

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” 

This resonated with me soundly the first time I read it, because it reflects a lot of the same feelings that I have about the purpose of life. In reality, everything will be forgotten eventually, so what's the point in trying to leave a footprint on history when there will be a time when history will be completely erased? To me, this redefines the meaning of life. To me, the purpose of us being alive is to help each other out. If I were to die, I would die happy knowing that I've changed the lives of the people who know me, hopefully for the better. If all that means is that my friends have a better sense of self worth because of things I've said to them in the past, then that's good enough. What's important isn't leaving our footprints on history, it's leaving footprints on each other's souls. 

My Life is Crazy!

It's been such a long time since I've posted, but I ran into an extra half hour tonight, so I decided to write. Scratch that, I don't actually have an extra half hour, but i'm willing to procrastinate even further on my homework in order to write.
Anyways, damn my life is crazy! My ski season started up a few weeks ago, and so I haven't been getting home until around 6 or 630 every night. Add that to the craziness of trying to do homework while completely exhausted, it's quite a handful. I'm managing pretty well though.

I decided to write today to talk about the amazing day that is today. It's 12/12/12, and it's the last day like this in a century! The next repeat day will be in 100 years, which most of us alive now won't be alive to see. I was reading a Facebook post that one of my friends posted about today, and it was inspiring and true.

"For those that say 12/12/12 and dates like it don't matter, that's cool i guess...say what you want, but consider this first. There's so many days of celebration, but how often can absolutely everyone believe and celebrate the same thing? Independence days and religious holidays only effect some people. This is a day we can all celebrate together. There's no "i don't believe in it" or "hooray we lost a war." So if you still think its not a big deal. Fine."

It's just cool because it's a day that everyone can celebrate, no matter their religion or beliefs. I wasn't very appreciative of this before I read this, but it gave me a little bit more respect for people that get really excited about this kind of thing.

Anyways, i'm not sure when i'll be able to post again, so keep calm and carry on (:

Busy Busy

Life in high school is CRAZY busy! I looked at my schedule this week, and with my extracurricular activities  I have 2 every day for the week, and it doesn't look like my winter will be getting much easier.
Monday: Nordic practice and tutoring for the ACT
Tuesday: Nordic practice and my first indoor pitching practice
Wednesday: Nordic practice and my pick up date for the books for my Girl Scout book drive
Thursday: Nordic practice and my sister's band concert
Friday: Nordic practice and the Sadie Hawkin's dance
Somehow, I need to make a Minnie Mouse patterned skirt, study for a 200 word Spanish vocab test, do my homework, and try to get enough sleep before Friday. Add to that the fact that I'm basically addicted to Weeds (the TV show, which I highly recommend).

Wish me luck....

There's only one queen, and that's Madonna

I went and saw Madonna last night, and it was the most entertaining concert I've ever been to. Being 16 years old, I wasn't familiar with a lot of her songs. My friend Sydney and I were some of the youngest people in the audience by far. Madonna's stage presence was undeniably the best I've seen so far. Even at 54, she can still move around and sing tremendously. She spent the whole 3 hours she was onstage singing and showing off some dance moves. It was hard for me to believe that she was 54 as I was watching her run around the stage for so long. Even better than her performance were her fans. There were so many impersonators in the audience that just made my day. There was this one guy in what was essentially a black one piece swimsuit, heels, fishnets, and a big blonde wig. It was overall a really great show, and if she ever comes back, I highly recommend that you go see her show.

Junior Year :(

People have always told me that junior year in high school is the hardest year, and that I should buckle down and get ready for the homework load. I've never truly understood that until this past week. As the end of the quarter nears, it feels like my stress levels have been increasing at exactly the same rate. I've had to memorize 500 vocab words in Spanish over the past few weeks, and the cumulative test is tomorrow. I would study for that, but I had to do identifications (basically definitions  and a study question of AP US history. To give you some perspective, doing all of my IDs took me a solid 2 hours. I managed to turn it in 15 minutes before the deadline. Worse, we have to be out of our music tomorrow in Concert Choir. Our teacher, Doctor Henderson (DH) can be a real hard ass sometimes, but i'm sure he can whip us into shape. The bummer is that I didn't have time to look over my music. Along with the stress of needing to get good grades, I have to start to think about what college I want to attend, and need to start scheduling visits to these colleges. Another thing adding to my stress bundle is thinking about the Sadie Hawkin's dance. I need to ask sort of soon, the dance is in a month. If I needed to choose a picture that represented my feelings right now, this would definitely sum it up.

Halloween Haunts and Deep Thoughts

So if this comes off as a rage about Halloween, that's because it is. Halloween has always been one of my least favorite holidays, just because of the sheer stupidness of traditions that take place. For kids, Halloween is a time to dress up like your favorite superhero, your favorite celebrity, or character from movies and books. It's a time to show your imagination and a time to get free candy while having fun. As a kid, picking out my Halloween costume was probably one of the best things ever. When I was around 5 years old, I was Po from the Tellitubbies, and I remember loving it.

 But as you get older, Halloween becomes a showing of who has the biggest boobs or who can wear the shortest skirt or lowest cut shirt. It's become completely obsessed with sexuality, which bothers me. I understand wanting to go to a party feeling like your best self, but your best self shouldn't also be your least dressed self.
Today I also saw Perks of Being a Wallflower, which stars Emma Watson, and there were a few lines that were very powerful. My personal favorite line in the whole movie was either "and in that moment, we were infinite" or "we accept the love we think we deserve" The idea of a singular moment being able to have so much power over the way we think and are is amazing. The idea that a moment can hold all of the thoughts and feelings that we have inside of us, and just release them all and feel so infinite.
So that's enough deep thoughts for the day. That was just a movie that made me think. If you have a spare 45 minutes or so, I highly recommend you watch Minnesota Nice, a student-produced documentary about bullying in Minnesota. It's very powerful, and honestly made me cry once or twice, and definitely made me more conscious of the things I say to other people.

Walk The Moon

A few days ago I was sitting in my Enriched Biology class, and we learned about the Law of Thermodynamics. Basically, this law says that as time goes on, disorder (entropy) increases. I started thinking about how depressing that would be if it applied to real human relationships and society. Another part of this law is that it requires energy to go back to being normal, which I found to apply wonderfully to human life. If a relationship you're in gets complicated, and disorder and chaos seems to be following you around, if you just leave it to fix itself, chances are that it wont. It requires energy and effort to repair relationships. So needless to say, I don't remember a whole lot of what I learned in Bio that day....

At my school, there's a Sadie's dance, which is our theme dance. Each friend group in my school chooses a theme, and members of the group dress accordingly, typically the couples coordinate. For example, theres the highly used Disney theme, where each couple would pick a Disney couple to represent.  It's a girls ask guys dance, which means I have to start thinking about who to ask and how to ask them. There are of course a bunch of ideas, but there are very few that haven't been used before, or are creative/individual enough for me to want to use. It winds up being relatively stressful, but the dances are very fun so it's all worth it. So i've been spending a lot of time thinking about that lately, which isn't what i'd love to be spending my time doing.... Oh well.

Please take time to check out this song, and note the amazing dance move at 2:06. This is why he's so amazing.

I'm a strong believer that, as a junior in high school, i'm still very much in my childhood. I'm still learning lots of valuable life lessons, learning so much about myself, and becoming the person that I was meant to be. This blog is mainly for me to talk to myself, but as long as other people are interested, you're encouraged to keep reading as I go through my completely ordinary childhood. 

I suppose I should tell a bit about myself to start it off. I'm a junior in high school in Minnesota, and I absolutely love high school. It has given me the freedom to choose what classes I take, let me develop my interests, and generally  given me more freedom than junior high or elementary school. I cross country ski during the winter, and it's one of my great passions. There'll probably be quite a few more posts upcoming as the ski season starts up. I also play fastpitch softball year round, which i've been doing since I was in second grade. Its just a habitual thing now, something that's been such a big part of my life for so many years that I can't really imagine giving it up. 

I'm not really sure what else to put in a blog, so if my first few posts are a bit rough, forgive me. Hopefully, i'll be posting every few days with updates on my life, opinions, and i'll probably do a 30 day challenge at some point. Please, feel free to comment with questions or ideas about what I should write about. I've always been interested in writing, and it looks like i've finally found somewhere to put that up.