why standardized testing is an epic fail.

Oh God, I'm taking SATs this weekend. I think the realization that my whole future could be impacted by all these tests im taking in the next month is finally hitting me. but wait, how is that even fair? that doesn't make any sense...a few hours of my life could make or break whether or not I get into my dream college (cough, Duke, cough)? that's...pretty messed up.

Here's my issue with standardized testing: it has NO point. We take state tests every year that just detract from class time and tell the state how bad or good our teachers are, and how much more money they have to find in the budget in order to continue to improve our education. I'll tell the state people how to improve our education: give us a little less homework so we can actually, possibly, maybe like school a little bit, and put a little more effort into it and therefore get more out of it. But hell, that's never going to happen.

Here's the thing with SATs. What happens when a kid has a bad morning? Yeah, I know you can take them again, but maybe someone's just bad at standardized testing. Everyone has their strengths, and everyone has their weaknesses. Its much more worth it for a college to focus on the curriculum of a school, what classes a student took and their grades in those classes. Which now-a-days, thats what most colleges do. The SAT and ACT are becoming less and less important in the decisions of college admissions officers because they know that these standardized systems have flaws.

So I say, save us all the damn stress and just ditch them.

My First Blog Post

Hello there.
So I've had this urge to start a blog for a while, just as a place to ramble on aimlessly about all the random things I think about or ask questions about or whatever. And even though there will probably be like, one person that reads this, whatever. My thoughts are now being made available to the rest of the world. Wooooooooo.

So yeah, this is basically just where I'm gonna ramble on about this and that, and whatever comes to my mind. It's probably gonna be pretty boring/stupid/pointless, but whatever. No one's making you read it.

Anywho, today in physics, we talked about the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of the stuff that Dr. Naimie talked about went in one ear and out the other, especially when I was dying of heat stroke during his lecture, but I did pick up on one thing. The fact that the human eye can only see red, blue and green. Which is really weird. So to physicists, red, blue and green are the primary colors. Which totally goes against everything we've ever learned in art classes (so this therefore backs up my opinion that art is totally useless in the real world). But then he started talking about how every color we see is a combination of these three colors, and how we don't really 'see' things, but we see the reflection of light off of them. Which is totally weird and WAY too advanced for me to comprehend, but I'll trust Dr. Naimie if he says it. Because the man is a genius.

Speaking of geniuses...Woodrow Wilson was the only certified 'genius' president. Which is like, wicked cool. I wish I was a genius...then maybe they wouldn't make me take lots of stupid classes at school and yeah. That would make me happy. Oh, and Wilson's first name really isn't Woodrow. It's actually Thomas. In case you were wondering.

So that's about all I have for random rambles right now. Other than the fact that this swine flu thing is kind of funny...everyones freaking out about it. Like I said, its going to be the bird flu and SARS all over again- everyone gets all worried, and then nothing happens. Story of our lives, right?