School annoys me.

First off, I want to give a shout out to Melissa, who is a pretty cool person and keeps bugging me to  update this thing.

Do not want break to be over. I haven't done much but hang out with people and have fun, which was, admittedly, much more fun than studying for AP tests...and you know what, the AP testing system is a stupid crock that should be gotten rid of anyway. 

I read a very well written article recently on Trident Online (it's an online student run newspaper for Corona del Mar) written by an old friend of mine, which discussed the perceived dishonesty with and the ethical problems of changing student's grades after AP tests to reflect their score (if they did well). The writer strongly disagreed with the very idea and thought AP classes should be graded like any other class, with a kind of 'too bad for them' view of students who do well on the AP test yet poorly in the class. Link if anyone wants to read it is here: http://tridentonline.net/c

ontent/view/471/28/

While I agree with her insofar as grades should be based upon overall participation and commitment to the class, I have to disagree with the premise that inflating grades based on AP test scores is unethical, my logic being:

AP classes are at a much higher difficulty level than regular or even Honors level courses; they include intensive amounts of writing and rigorous exams modeled off of the AP test itself. This makes it difficult for the vast majority of AP students to get an A, if only because (for most AP classes I've taken) tests are constructed similar to the AP exam and weighted as such, with an emphasis on extreme difficulty and specificity but with a large curve to ensure that students do not completely fail. 
It can be argued that the students are aware of the difficulty of the courses they are taking and should therefore be prepared to work harder to attain the grades they feel they deserve, but this argument is invalidated by the fact that (unlike most high school level courses), AP classes are not geared to giving the students an overall grounding in the information and teaching them necessary skills. AP classes alone of any high school course are specifically and uniquely geared towards preparing the students to take and pass the AP test. This means that even if a student works incredibly hard in a specific AP class, they might not be able to achieve the level of unified excellence on every test or essay that would be required to obtain an A, simply because the class is not geared to provide general knowledge of the subject (and ability to pass in class tests) but rather has the broader focus of preparing for the AP test. Anyone who's been in an AP class knows that teachers do not structure exams to test a unified body of knowledge, but rather to show students what the AP test graders would be looking for in that particular area (many AP teachers use AP test questions on in class tests to further this goal). 
Because the sole purpose of the class is to ensure that students will be able to take/pass the AP test, it is absolutely reasonable for teachers to evaluate the students based on how well they have internalized the informationgiven to them and been able to use it in the method for which it was intended: the AP test itself. 
If a student in an AP class receives a score of a 3, 4, or 5, they have realized the entire goal, point, and purpose of an AP class- to pass the exam. Whether or not they did well in the class itself is immaterial; by scoring highly on the AP test, they have demonstrated their knowledge of and commitment to the subject and should duly be rewarded by the corresponding grades on their transcript. 
The entire class is based on providing students with the tools to pass the AP exam. Once they have realized that goal, the student in question has proved that they deserve an A or a B in the class because they accomplished what the class was designed to provide. AP classes cannot be evaluated on the same basis as ordinary or honors level classes because they are structured, formatted, and taught completely differently. 

^This is completely disregarding my current Psych class, which is absolutely not geared towards preparing us for the AP test (so far, he's mentioned the test twice, and the bulk of our preparation has been him telling us to buy X prep book), but most AP classes in general. And I'm slightly biased in this issue, being someone who doesn't like to work in class, doesn't like to do assignments, but does well on final evaluations in general because I'm able to bullshit like a pro. But still, if a student does well on the AP test, then the student deserves an A in the class, or at least a B. If anything, I think it's more impressive, not less, that they manage to pull a 5 or a 4 out of the bag after not having given a damn all year. That shows talent, rather than rote memorization, which god knows is 90% of what most AP students rely on anyways. 

There is also the fact that AP tests are so strictly graded based on a specific rubric that if a teacher did not spend a significant amount of in class time talking about the various methods and requirements (particularly for writing sections) then the students would fail. 

And pretentious students like (pardon me) the writer of the original article, who take a high moral ground because they themselves are unaffected, annoy me. There's a good deal too much competition at Uni and in high school in general; there are a lot of students, particularly in the top tier, who are more than happy to see others fail because it makes them look better in comparison. We need to take a step back and realize that we're all being judged- on what?  A list of skills and accomplishments that (quite honestly) have absolutely no value in real life; rather than competing with one another and tearing one another down, we should be angry at the system that reduces us to merely a list of grades, extracurriculars, a carefully written and well formatted essay...it's stupid, and it's wrong. And it is utterly devaluing of any real talent or extraordinary quality possessed by any of us, since there is no way our full potential can be realized if we constantly have one eye on our college application...it makes us safe, it makes us boring, it makes us tame. And that's stupid. And I am honestly sick and tired of students who act as though they have some sort of God given talent because they have a perfect GPA, because, really, nobody gives a fuck. And they just perpetuate this whole system of backstabbing and arrogance, and it's quite rude.

Of course, you could just say I'm bitter, since I don't have a perfect GPA, but I am taking a lot of AP courses and it brings me into contact with these people on almost a daily basis, and I'm completely taken aback by this attitude that "I will win, fuck everyone else" in a competition that is ultimately useless anyway. On the other end of the spectrum is those people who I am disdainful towards...which I suppose just makes me part of the whole thing whether I want to be or not. But I'm not disdainful towards them because they're not intelligent, I'm disdainful towards those who assume they are much smarter than they actually are and treat other people like shit because of it...there's a certain person who's in several of my classes who's been rubbing me the wrong way all year, and I'm really looking forward to the day when I can finally bitch her out and inform her that she is actually not as smart as she thinks she is. All she is is disrespectful and rude, and that schtick gets old fast. 

Oh, and by the way, I would like to clarify that the writer of the original article only comes off as pretentious in that particular piece, and that she is a very warmhearted and down to earth person. My diatribe was directed not at her specifically but at unjustified arrogance in general. 

Apologies to anyone who was offended, it was not intentional. 

Ranting, etc.

I was talking to Vanessa yesterday, and she was telling me about a conversation she had with someone about Prop 8 and how they believe that gay people should have the right to marry, just not a legalized institution known as marriage. Which seems pretty contradictory, but apparently it made sense to them...anyways, so I was laughing about it with her and I referred to the gay community as 'we'. 

And she asked me, does the whole Prop 8/gay rights thing bother me more now that I've come out?

It was a weird feeling. Because I mean, of course it's just as outrageous to many straight people when gay couples are discriminated against, and of course you don't have to be a member of the gay community to sympathize with gay rights. In fact, given that gay people make up a relatively small percentage of the overall American population, it's a really really good thing that there are many straight allies willing to stand up and fight for our rights. 

But then at the same time, it kind of hit me how intensely personal all this is. They're trying to take rights away from me. They're trying to keep me from seeing my wife in the hospital, they're trying to prevent me from being legally recognized as someone in a long term, societally acceptable romantic partnership. My state, my community, my neighbors don't consider me to be an equal citizen. It was something I'd never really considered; I've been involved with gay rights activism for so long but I'd gotten used to referring to the gay community as 'they'. And now I'm referring to it as 'we'. And therefore I have to take on all the negative repercussions of that, all of the prejudice, all of the hate, all of the people who look at me differently or consider me to be a lost cause. It sort of knocked the wind out of me for a bit. 

And it made me sad. And it makes me sad. Because I realized that by coming out, I put myself within the confines of a group that will always be on the fringes of society. I labeled myself with something that is incredibly controversial, I put myself out there as a member of a community that is hated by millions of Americans. The idea of being hated, by people who don't know me, who have never met me, who don't know anything about me other than my sexuality- it's mind boggling. And I don't even know how to deal with it. And I don't want to deal with it. I want to live in a place where that is not an issue. I mean, for god's sake, I live in California, historically one of the most gay-friendly places in the nation, and even here in Irvine, where we have literally hundreds of different nationalities and races and a very mixed school population- even here there's a ton of discrimination. And I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud to say that I have a girlfriend, and she's amazing, and I'm attracted to women, and yes, I've dated guys but I have to say there's no comparison. I don't want to come off as whining about all the difficulties of being gay, because at least for me the positives far outweigh the negatives.

I just want to live somewhere where I don't have to wear my pride as a shield. I want to be someplace where being gay really is just a facet of personality, like eye color or hair color, not something that garners more attention simply by way of being controversial- even if all the attention is positive. My point is that being gay should not have to be such a big deal for anyone. I think it's great that a lot of members of the gay community are really out and open about their sexuality, and I think it's great that a lot of members prefer to keep it relatively quiet. It's their choice. But it shouldn't. have. to. matter. Gay people shouldn't have to be so flamboyantly gay that they force others into accepting them by forcing them to deal with it on an everyday basis, and they shouldn't be ashamed of it because of how they know they'd be perceived. 

I don't know how all of this is going to turn out, I don't know what the world will be like 30 years from  now. And this is just my take on things. Because right now I do believe that everyone who is gay has a responsibility to be as active and as open as they can be, if only because I think it's the only way to show everyone that gay people are functioning perfectly well in every level of society. But I also believe that every person's sexuality is their business and theirs alone, and nobody has the right to even ask them to clarify, let alone label themselves. It's a huge mess of contradictions, and I hope that by being open and active now we can eventually retire to the point where it really will not matter.