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.