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September 7th, the first day of school. The first day of a new year. The first day of new classes and new classmates. The first day of responsibility and scheduling.
September 7th, the last day of summer. The last day of freedom. The last day of friends and parties. The last day of excitement and fun. The last day of SLEEP.
Our school is on a "block schedule" program. This means that we have 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th Periods on a "Blue Day," and 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th Periods on a "Gold Day." We have 5th period every day, but it’s only half as long as the other "block" periods. This might seem as if it is more trouble than what it’s worth, but just look at the upsides of block scheduling. Um…well, there’s…uh…let’s see…actually, there are no upsides to block scheduling. We listen to a boring lecture for over an hour, fall asleep after the first five minutes and then spend the remaining time trying to figure out what we could have possibly missed in the first five minutes that could have been so complicated that everything the teacher now says seems like it is in an Old Norse language! Phew! But at least with "block scheduling," besides from only having to go to the boring classes every other day, we also get a cool decoder ring to figure out just which day we’re on!
So, on September 7th, which was a Blue Day, I, with my decoder ring in one hand and my new schedule in the other, headed off to school, ready for a new year, and I walked into the school, went to my locker, and I put way too many commas in this sentence. After that, I went to my first class: IB English 1.
The "IB" stands for International Baccalaureate, which is an educational program that is used to raise the American educational standards. The basic idea was brought up when the Department of University and Departmental Education, abbreviated DUDE, looked at the average test scores between American and the rest of the world. After reviewing the scores, they released the following study: "DUDE! Were dumb!" (Yes, that typo is supposed to be there.)
After this investigation, DUDE decided to go surfing. Afterwards, they initiated a program that would, in theory, make American students as smart as those in Western Europe and Japan. They planned to do this by increasing the work load, making tests harder, requiring many courses that have no necessary value in the Real World, and decreasing our moral spirits. This method differs from those in Western Europe, whose basic plan is to have good teachers and not force anything onto the students. This way, the students will not feel stressed and will actually want to learn. Which plan do you think is better for the student: A system that promotes a stress-free and eager-to-learn environment, or a system that creates tension and is the reason that we have so many McDonalds managers?
Anyway, for IB, you need to take four semesters of English, two in the Junior Year and two in the Senior Year. In the Sophomore Year, you take Pre-IB English. This is set up really nicely, so that after taking the Pre-IB class, you realize that you don’t really want to take the full-IB course. But, by that time, they don’t let you drop out and be part of the regular English class with the students that probably won’t pursue a career in literature. Once you get sucked into IB, you’re there for life! HA HA HA HA! We’ve got you now!
But IB doesn’t stop there, no. I am also taking IB Physics 1, which goes along the same route as English, and IB Higher Level II. IB Higher Level is the highest level of math classes that you can take in high school. Like IB Physics and IB English, it is a four-semester course. However, there is a twist. IB Higher Level I and IB Higher Level II are usually both taken during the Senior year. However, since I started algebra a year early, I get to take one as a Junior and one as a Senior. Since I took Pre-IB Pre-Calculus last year, I will take the calculus half of the four-semester Higher Level plan this year. This half is called IB Higher Level II, not because it is harder than IB Higher Level I, but just because all of the DUDE dudes worked at McDonalds at one time or another.
IB also offers IB Government and IB History courses, but I didn’t even start with those. Instead, I took a year off from history classes last year. Now, I’m taking United States and Virginia History with the "normal" people. Now, I’ve taken upper-level class all through middle school and high school, so this class is the first with students who most likely won’t bother with graduate school. I don’t want to sound like a snob or someone who talks down to people with an academic schedule not as challenging as mine, but, if my schedule was a 7-course meal, the US VA History class would be the intellectual equivalent of a napkin ring.
But enough with my class synopsis. Let’s get back to the day at hand. The first day, that is. And the first day started with my English class, which just happened to be located in the Freshman sub-school. Seeing that I’m already taller than 80% of the 11th Grade, standing amongst the 9th Graders gave me the strange sensation to grab Fay Wray and climb the Empire State Building. And when I actually found my English classroom, it turns out that it was the same English classroom that I had as a Freshman. Coincidence?
The next block, which is really 3rd period, is Accounting. With my strong background in math, I figured that this class would be a fun course to increase my math usage skills. I also thought that there would be a bunch of people in the class that could recite pi to the 50th place and program their programmable calculators to solve the Y2K problem at the same time. However, when I entered the class, I got a new impression.
Accounting is not a math class per se. It is a business class, which meant that it was not just for the mathematically well-endowed. Half of the class would, most likely, go on to become math majors, but the other half had a different reason. I believe that their thinking on this class was, "Well, I’ve been arrested so many times, that I know the legal system real well, and this is easier than business law." But enough with accounting.
My next class is US VA History, which I have already told you my feelings about. I made sure that I sat in the very front row, to signify that I was not a member of a gang and actually wanted to learn something from this class. Since this class was 5th period, I could look forward to having it every day. Lucky me.
7th period is the Higher Level class, which I have with Lorenzo and Mark. We are three of the four Juniors in the class, and we had all gone to elementary, middle and high school together. The other Junior is Michael, but we don’t talk to him much, because he’s cool. Actually, the three of us sit together, so we can combine our efforts in order to make all of us look smarter than the Seniors, which is the ultimate goal of the class. We don’t care about calculus and derivatives. All we want to do is to show up the Seniors. Because we Juniors are destined to show that the class of the "Big Zero" is not as special or important as they seem to think they are. When compared to us, the Seniors will always fall short of the class of the "Big One."
As you might have guessed, there is a little bit of rivalry between the Junior and Senior class. I, as a professional writer, will try to remain objective and not choose sides. I will try to portray the Junior and Senior classes as true to life as they really are. In fact the Junior class motto is, "Be True to Yourself, Your School, and Your Auditor," while the Senior class motto is, "Duh?"
If I have offended any Seniors out there, I do apologize. If I have offended any Sophomores or Freshmen, I don’t care. Also, if I have offended you by saying that I am too smart to be in the same class as you, I want to say that this whole chapter was based on my first impressions of these classes. And that goes for what I will say for the second day, too. After spending a week-or-so in these classes, my opinion has changed. I am not too smart to be in those classes that I stated before. If you think that I was calling you dumb in any way, just read this: I am not smarter than no one not in the IB classes, nor am I not more intelligent than you. (If you can take out all of the double negatives in that sentence and figure out what it is that I have just said, then you deserve a pat on the back. I won’t give you one, but you deserve one.)
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