Tag: college

SAT TESTING ROUND TWO

mushuoo
Photo Credit: http://www.educationnews.org

Today I came home to hear some of the best news I have all week.

President Obama hates standardized testing almost as much as I do.

The Obama administration has come up with a new plan for standardized testing; capping standardized testing to 2% of classroom time.

Someone finally understands the pressure.

I have spent the past week agonizing over my latest SAT scores.

After receiving a score that I believe it so sub-par to the standards set, I sat in my room for hours and considered my options: maybe I won’t get accepted to any colleges, maybe I should just give up now, maybe I should spend an extra three hours a day studying for this test.

For this is a test that does not demonstrate the magnitude of what I have learned throughout the course of high school, but a test that displays how well I can adapt to it’s irrelevant questions.

Questions that are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, questions that do not reflect how intelligent I am, or how successful I will be in my college career.

Rather, this test gives college admission teams the ability to put my knowledge into a category of advanced or average.

The pressure I have felt throughout the past four years of my life to meet the “above average” score of this test is obscene.

I have spend countless nights laying awake in my bed wondering if the work I have completed in the last four years will be dismissed because of an average test score that I have earned through sitting at a desk for four hours.

The standardized system is flawed.

There is no standard anything for a million adolescent brains that function at different paces and in different ways.

SAT SCORES OH NO

mushuoo
Photo Credit:http://hyperionlearning.me/

After years of mentally preparing myself to endure the most mentally draining four-hours of my high school career, I have just completed taking a second SAT test.

I have so many thoughts about this tedious task that every high school student in the United States is required to do.

I think it is ridiculous that a standardized test score can determine a student’s future. A good student with a high GPA and a lot of extra curricular activities can get an average score solely because they might not be the best test taker, but that one test score has a large weight on which colleges accept them.

I do not fully understand why standardized tests have become a way of determining students academic careers for such a long time, or why they have become of such a high priority. Although most colleges look at students holistically, California State schools consider students purely on GPA and standardized test scores.

However, I understand the reasoning behind standardized testing; giving students a chance to show the general academic knowledge they have accumulated in high school.

But why does a test have to be the only thing that proves a student has gained knowledge? Why is it that the pressure to get a high-test score can consume a student’s conscience for months so that they focus all of their time studying for one generalized, tricky test?

I know, because it consumed me.

Applications? More like Agitation

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Applications, applications, applications. For the past two years that word has been playing in my head like a broken record.

I don’t understand why the college process has to be so difficult. I understand that this is a serious decision that will impact my future immensely.

Photo Credit: http://www.charterpulse.files.wordpress.com

Everyone keeps saying that this process should be fun and exciting but all I have felt is frustration, confusion, stress and anxiety. To say the least, I am ready for this process to be over. I am ready to already know where I will be for the next four years of my life. I am ready to know what I want to major in – what I want to do with my life.

Another aspect of the college experience that I find extremely frustrating and anxiety producing is the SAT and ACT tests. I hate that our whole academic career can be summed up into a number from one, five-hour test that we took on a random Saturday morning.

Photo Credit: http://www.gocollege.com

What is the point of working so hard in school if that isn’t even going to count as much as a test score?

Burnout

indigoshell

School is hard.

Don’t get me wrong – education is supposed to be challenging. But more frequently I’ve heard people say “Is he okay?” Following comes the response, “Yeah but he’s all burnt out.”

Burnout is real. It’s a state of chronic stress that can cause lethargy, depression, and general numbness and not a care in the world. (I suggest you read the link given below.)

“Burnout happens when you’ve been experiencing chronic stress for so long that your body and your emotional system have begun to shut down and are operating in survival mode,” says Dr. Sara Denning, a clinical psychologist based in Manhattan who specializes in dealing with stress and anxiety. “You numb out because you can’t think. You can’t even make decisions anymore.”

Further delving into the article reveals that burnout symptoms were arriving in younger and younger people, as early as college freshman. Which is where I will be next year. And it’s also where I feel like I’m heading next year.

There’s something called Senioritis, and it’s, as described as me, “a high school senior lacking in motivation because WE’RE GRADUATING OMYGOSH.” The symptoms are similar to a burnout, lacking motivation, lethargy, etc. The difference is that Senioritis isn’t usually stress or depression caused. It’s just that knowing how I won’t be here next year to deal with consequences makes me want to… Slack off.

I’ve gotten off topic.

Burnout.

If a college freshman is already feeling the symptoms of burnout, then what does that say about the education system? Are we supposed to be holding these children over a fire with a stick? Maybe. But are we then supposed to let them slow roast until a perfect, golden brown –

Photo cred; Cook In / Dine Out
– or let them catch on fire and watch them try and quench themselves?

Photo cred; Dreier.com

Graphic image aside… There goes my two cents. And I don’t care enough to get them back either.

It’s a Small World

indigoshell

When I was in first grade, I went to school in Hangzhou International School. The classes ranged from preschool to twelfth grade, totaling to about 312 students. At least, that’s the only number I remember.

HIS is a small private school with students from Japan, Korea, Germany, Australia, you name it. It was a day school, ending at 3, and uniforms were required. Nobody got dress-coded, and each class became very, very tight.

One of my most vivid memories is walking down a long, white hallway decorated with life-sized paintings of dinosaurs. It was an empty hallway with big windows and no doors, so we could be as loud as we wanted. And with 25+ students in my grade, we were definitely loud. We travelled from class to class as a pack, because in lower and middle school, that’s how classes worked.

Photo cred: Byrne Robotics

I was at HIS for 8 years. Leaving China to go to Ojai Valley School was probably the biggest change in my life.

There’s only 114 students at OVS. At least, that’s the only number I remember. We have a dress code and students that ran around campus in all different directions to different classes.

It’s wide, crazy, open, and very, very, very small. You’re basically forced to  get to know the people here because we’re kinda-sorta stuck on top of a hill together.

The two college dorms I applied to, Skarland and Moore, with 100 and 322 students living in them. Which are the sizes of the only schools I have ever been to. I guess you can consider me a small-town girl.

It was a small world for me. This school, with about 9,000 students, is going to be an entirely new galaxy for me.

Time Out

kennyroo

People wonder why teenagers get sick so often, and I think I have found the answer.

We are constantly being run into the ground, overwhelmed with task after task.

I will use myself as an example. I go to school, do my homework, and go to volleyball. Everyday. No breaks in between.

You would think I would get used to it, and I do in some ways. But sometimes the lack of a break catches up to me.

Getting home at 10pm in need of a shower and a snack does not let the teen body get the rest that it needs to stay healthy.

At our age we are growing so much mentally and physically.

If we take the breaks that we need, we are scolded for being lazy or not trying hard enough – but if we do too much we are told that we need to “slow down”.

Confusing, right?

So much is asked of the high school or college student, and yet whenever I say that I can almost always hear an adult scoffing and making some snide remark about how “we have it so easy”.

And perhaps in a lot of ways we do.

I know that I don’t have to worry about paying the bills at the end of every month – and I am so grateful for that.

But I do have to worry about my grades, sports, getting into colleges, trying to maintain some kind of social life, and a lot of other factors that are major stressors.

So why is anyone surprised when 1/3 of the junior class gets a cold, or a fever?

Some of us get only three to five hours of sleep per night because of the work load that is put on us.

Everyone needs a break now and then, and when that break isn’t taken, the human body will find a way to take it.

Our systems are beaten to the ground. And while we may not have to same feats to overcome as some, we have our own.

https://i0.wp.com/static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/11/1/1383330388800/Boy-asleep-over-book-010.jpg
photo credit to: http://www.static.guim.co.uk

What would you do…

mushuooLeave a comment

… if your passion was so far away?

If the one thing you loved to do more than anything else was inaccessible?

I don’t really know either.

Since I was a toddler, I have been skiing. As soon as the season starts until the day the season ends, I have always taken every opportunity I get to drive up to the mountains. I feel at home on the mountain; I know there is no other place I would rather be.

This year, I have only had a week of ski time in Mammoth.

I guess living in Southern California is not the best place for an avid skier to live.

Photo Credits: statim.guo.uk.com

This brings me to my main point: where would an avid skier live? Aspen? Switzerland? Canada?

In about a year and a half I will be deciding which college to attend for the next four years of my life, which makes me question if I should move out of California and move somewhere I can ski on a regular basis.

But do I really want to move states or countries away from family and friends?

The decisions begin.

What is a future, and where can I get one?

lanative1Leave a comment

No but seriously – I’m very much lost when it comes to my future. Today, my mom asked me to come watch something in her room. Given the last thing she showed me was a video of a baby otter learning to swim, I was willing to submit. Instead, she showed me an ABC feature on college admissions.

My entire life has been geared towards my future, and more importantly, college. My parents sent me to a specific preschool because it had a high matriculation to the special elementary school I attended, which had an even higher matriculation to the prestigious middle and high school I then went to. This high school is world-renowned for its spectacular college matriculation – the reason my mother was so intent on me attending. I was so absorbed with college from a young age that I didn’t even think of what comes afterwards.

Now at a different kind of school, I am faced with a shocking change of attitude. Where I am now, college is not the main focus. It is mentioned occasionally during meetings, but the announcements are geared towards seniors, seldom juniors, and almost never sophomores or freshmen. Although I know this is the norm through most schools, I can’t help but feel lost, and even insecure.

When I went to my old school, all of the focus on college was basically done for me. College was a given – everyone thought about it all the time. It was such a recitation that I didn’t even really think about it. But here, I have to independently think about my own future without anyone prompting me. That’s the strange part that I am not used to, and it’s where the trepidation comes in.

Before now, I never thought about what I want to go to college for, and what I want to do after. It’s such a classic teenage cliché – “Where am I going, what am I doing?” I’ve never really thought about it until now, and I’m really at a loss. I have no idea what I want to do when I’m older – be a writer maybe, but of course, that’s a tough choice. Whenever I say this when people ask, they laugh in my face. I guess I don’t really know where I’m going.

All these new concerns have arisen now because someone very close to me is going through the college process, and is feeling a bit of what I’m feeling – second guessing their given goals and really thinking about the future. I want to get a head start on these decisions, so I’m not as stressed out later. But that is a curse as well as a blessing, because I am feeling the senior stress now as a sophomore.

I can masterfully edit a college essay so it fits exactly what a classic admissions officer is looking for, I can recite the top 10 schools in the world, and I can rattle off expected SAT scores and the times and number of questions in every section of the test. What I can’t do, however, is figure out what I want. And that’s something that I really should know by now. Maybe the constant college preparation hasn’t aided me, it has just brainwashed me. I can help everyone else think about college and prepare, but I can’t help myself.

 

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Just a Practice Run?

kennyrooLeave a comment

That 89 percent that could have been a 90 percent is not going to matter to you in five years, believe it or not. I can’t even fathom how often the sentence “but it will look good for college apps,” is heard yearly on a high school campus. Are these four years what define us as humans? I sure hope that’s not the case because I’m so much more than a percentage.

High school is such a small portion of our lives when you really think about it. These four years are all that matter to you right now, but are they all that’s going to matter in ten? What about when our kids go to school? Will that B- you got in geometry matter then? We work so hard to be judged by our performance rather than our person.

What are schools teaching about being a good human? What about how to do our own taxes? Nope, sorry that’s not taught here. I can recite the Pythagorean theorem basically in my sleep, and tell you the difference between an acid and a base; but what about the values of honesty and kindness? Isn’t this all a practice run anyways? Aren’t we being trained for “The Real World”? I’ve only been told that exact statement once or a million times.

Kids these days are on anxiety medications for the amount of stress they’re put under. We run ourselves into the ground for what? To be judged some more? We are expected to put our education before personal health. It is not asked, but expected. We must do whatever it takes to succeed.

Photo from: http://lahaiseslair.com
Photo from: http://lahaiseslair.com

Colleges

Daphne PsaledakisLeave a comment

I’m at the end of my junior year, and along with all the other juniors in my school, I have begun the process of applying to college. Every time I talk to someone, and they find out I am a junior, they ask me if I know where I want to go to school.

The truth is, I have no clue. I have ideas, but how are you supposed to determine the atmosphere of a school from a website?

College seems like such a daunting prospect to me. I hear stories of people doing nothing but partying, but that’s not the type of environment I want to be in. I want to have fun.  I want to make friends. I want to have an internship. I want to learn about my major.

I am at an advantage, I think, because of my experience at boarding school. I am already fairly independent, and I am not afraid to be away from home.

And so begins the process of essays and filling out information, traveling to visit schools, and deciding where to spend the next four years of my life. Almost every junior and senior goes through this process. I just hope I am able to pick the right school for me.