Doing terribly in High School.

[Andropov]

I'm a 10th grader going to a pretty decent High School as far as High Schools go. There's no violence and the area surrounding the school is mostly upper-middle class.

The problem is that High School is really boring and rote. In most classes, the procedure is sit to down and take notes until the class is over. There's no intellectual stimulation whatsoever. And the information in the notes themselves is completely useless. We learn words and their connections with other words, but not what they really, actually mean. For instance, we're learning about the Ultraviolet index. The teacher explains the different UV index levels and their corresponding numbers and colors. But what does the UV index really measure? How are the numbers derived? The information is meaningless. You might as well memorize arbitrary strings of numbers. Richard Feynman talked about this problem in the Brazillian education system in his autobiography and it seems like it's happening here too.

Math is probably the worst offender since all the problems require you to do is to plug in the variables and write down the output. Most students don't even know what they're doing, they just do it since that's what the teacher tells you to do. It's like some sort of factory or something. I have a very strong mathematical intuition and want to either become a mathematician (non-applied) or some sort of scientist but as of now I'm doing extremely poorly in math class (I think I have a D). It doesn't help that I already know most of what we're doing anyway from independent study.

I don't know what my GPA is but I doubt it's higher than a 2.5. I do well on tests and quizzes but I almost never do homework, which is worth 50% of the entire grade in some classes. I don't know what to do. My goal is, as I said before, to be either a professor of math or science (Either physics or chemical engineering) or maybe even a writer or historian. Maybe even a philosopher. My SAT score was around 1900 in 7th grade but that was before I even knew basic algebra so it's probably much higher now. If I continue going to school, what kind of college do I have a chance at going to? Say if I have a 2.5 GPA and a 2200 SAT score. From there, I'll hopefully go to graduate school somewhere better.

There are honors classes available but that's only if you have an A- or better in the regular classes. And even then, from what I've heard, the honors classes are just more memorization and regurgitation, not more critical thinking. I'm in only one honors class (Language arts) and even though it's my favorite class (not my favorite subject) it's filled with incredibly pretentious, pompous fools who constantly spout unfunny 4chan memes and lame pi jokes. Their writing, from paper swap edits, is so bad that it's literally uncomfortable to read. It's filled with completely inappropriately complex words with no regard to "flow" or anything of that sort. The people in normal classes aren't much better. They're either really unintelligent or try way too hard to be badass. I'm pretty confident in social situations and am not at all shy, but there's only about 15 likable people in my entire school.

I could go on and on about all the other things wrong with the system, like how school starts at 7:00 AM so I have to wake up at 5:30 to catch the bus (Which comes at 6:20). Teenagers should get about 10 hours a sleep a day from what my doctors tell me, but that's not really feasible at all since that would mean I'd have to go to sleep at 7:30 PM. I hate going to school. I hate it more than any other thing in my life. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm thinking of maybe dropping out and becoming an autodidact but I doubt I'd get into college.

Anyway, this was pretty sloppily written and probably has some grammar and spelling mistakes but I'm pretty tired so there it is. I know other INTPs may have had similar experiences. Help!

 

[SpaceYeti]

So many words!

Yeah, I was bored in high school, too. My grades suffered because of it, and I dropped out of college twice because the boredom doesn't stop there.

Um... but don't fret and stuff?

You can always live a life of desperation and be broke until you do something desperate like join the military.

 

[The Gopher]

Yeah I did bad at maths it was too easy and predictable. Yeah I hated school.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Welcome to the club.
Yes, I know High school can be pretty tough, it's really brute forcing education upon students without really putting an emphasis on critical thinking and intellect. Try to hang on as much as you can, the worst thing you can do is let it all slip. Strive for those extra accomplishments and advanced classes, they will pay off in your post-high school life. Also, if possible, try to befriend some teachers of studies you have interest in. They can guide you while you're still in school and also help during your transition to college, if that is where you want to go.

I could go on and on about all the other things wrong with the system, like how school starts at 7:00 AM so I have to wake up at 5:30 to catch the bus (Which comes at 6:20). Teenagers should get about 10 hours a sleep a day from what my doctors tell me, but that's not really feasible at all since that would mean I'd have to go to sleep at 7:30 PM. I hate going to school. I hate it more than any other thing in my life. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm thinking of maybe dropping out and becoming an autodidact but I doubt I'd get into college.

Same here mate, from 9th grade til now in college, I've been waking up pretty much at 5:30-6:00. I don't think I have ever gotten 8-10 hours of sleep regularly. A possible suggestion - you can switch schools, but not at the cost of your friends and security.

 

[gruesomebrat]

IF you decide to drop out (which I don't recommend), getting back in at a later date is even more of a pain in the rump. I had to drop out due to some decisions I made that led to incarceration, and now, at the age of 20, I'm trying to get my diploma the good ol'-fashioned way; going back to school. I have never been so pissed off at society and at people in general. The fact that I need a piece of paper declaring me mentally fit to work is bad enough; the complete immaturity/extroversion at my school just makes it worse. I go in some days and by the time school is over, I want to kill someone because of all the ignorance I had to deal with through the day.

If you can manage to get through your schooling, boring though it may be, the first time, it will be much easier than trying to get that diploma any other way.

The only solace I can give you is that next year, you'll start getting onto some of the elective courses (provided Yankee schools are anything similar to Canuck schools), and the ability to pick your courses will help a little with the boredom. Unfortunately, you're into math so you'll find the same problem you're having now throughout your high school experience. The senior math courses are a bit more advanced equations, but you're still just plugging in a formula. I'm going into accounting, and I'm currently riding a 92 after missing the first 3 weeks of the semester. While I'm in class, I'm usually working on a personal project rather than classwork, but it's the easiest way for me to get through the class with my sanity somewhat intact.

 

[Meer]

At the canuck schools I went to, elective courses started around grade 6, I think.

I'm very glad I took a lot of IB and honours classes in high school, although it was still tedious at times. One of my classmates' phone number was pi and yeah, I guess it was pretty bad in those ways sometimes. Just a random question - how long have most of these kids in the honors classes been in these kind of classes?

I'm not sure what you could do. I would talk to some part of the school administration about this and tell them that they suck. Other than that, put on your hoop-jumping boots and prepare to have a horrible work ethic when you get out, maybe.

 

[gruesomebrat]

You got electives as early as Grade 6???????????? Christ, you're lucky. All through elementary school all my courses were compulsory... I didn't have a choice about what classes I was in. It wasn't till the later part of grade 10 and into grade 11 that I got to choose the better part of my schedule. Now, the only courses I have to take are English and one art or tech... the rest of my schedule is my choice.

Being given that choice about what you want to study is a god-send, though. Without that, I still wouldn't be back in school.

 

[Ermine]

...you do know that it's not anyone's responsibility to keep you intellectually entertained, right?

I can't stand the school system either, but is it more productive to be a victim, or make something out of it? You complain about how the curriculum isn't given any intellectual context. Make some! School apparently isn't any trouble for you, so you'll have plenty of time to go and research for yourself if you really do care about learning in more depth.

Also, if you really want to be a mathematician/scientist, you need much better grades in said science and math classes. Sure, high school GPA says very little, but it's very useful from a practical standpoint for getting into whatever university you want, where you have more of an opportunity for the learning you seek.

For the time being, just think about it as beating the system.

 

[EditorOne]

I don't know how old you are, or where you are, but generally you can drop out in the United States when you hit 16. I have a perfectly wonderful niece who is intelligent, rebellious, making her parents nuts, and literally unable to get up to go to school. So when she hit 16, they pulled her out. She is now working part time in the family business while taking tutoring that will allow her to get her GED, which is a degree stating she has achieved the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Her "plan" may not be yours, she's interested in stuff like makeup and hair and how to create a particular effect concentrating on appearance. She'll not go to college, at least not first, but to some kind of school to test out her ability to master that as an art form rather than just get by as a dime-a-dozen cosmetologist or whatever.
There is no reason you can't talk to people in the high school administration, to people in your family, and to people in any college specializing in the math stuff you enjoy to see if a GED followed by additional college prep tutoring might be an unusual but acceptable path for admission.
It might be a good idea not to tell them you're bored. People who have to struggle to master the basics, which could be anyone you talk to on this mission of realignment, get really, really pissed off when they hear someone say they're bored by the concepts they had to really push themselves to master. It smacks of elitism to them and, in an odd way, of boasting. Euphemisms like "I can't seem to come to grips with this environment" might be better.
Good luck with it. I think it's worth a shot. At the very least, even if everyone tells you it's not going to happen, you have at least let them know you do indeed give a damn and are trying to get to a good place. That will earn you some respect, perhaps.

 

[JarNew]

Read the 7 habits of highly effective teens

 

[EvilScientist Trainee]

It's funny you mentioned the Brazilian education system. I'm brazilian and can totally relate to what you've said in the OP so far. I recall, during high school, writing notes and notes. They never were useful to me, so yeah. Math was exactly as you've said. And me, just like you, yearned for better theoretical explanations behind math. Yet, we were fed with procedures, to which we had to input data in order to receive results. That meant that despite understanding the concepts, I never learned the 'procedure' and therefore was a bad math student.

However, in Brazil, the whole high school is focused on a big admission test know as the 'Vestibular'. And that test doesn't focus on how much understanding does a given student possess. Instead, that test focus is on how much of the high school information the student could memorize during that time. It's a highly competitive and eliminatory process. Medicine schools, for instance, get a candidates/spot rate of about 250 students for a single student spot at med school.

But once I got inside uni, you find the kind of stimulation you wanted. In almost all of my classes, the logic behind concepts is on the main stage. You eventually learn the concepts well enough to predict the behaviour of the system, which is different from what we had to learn on high school. Needless to say, University is a heaven for the INTP.

So, 'till you got to university, high school will inevitably be boring, regardless of where you live(Crude generalization, I know).

 

[Stoic Beverage]

I'm right there with you. I haven't quite cleared Jr. High (still in the 8th grade). I always make honor roll, but that's just a matter of paying attention to a quarter of the hellish monotony. The only elective I get is to choose which of three music classes (Band, orchestra, or choir). But I haven't got my choice in even that for three years running. By far, schooling is currently the worst thing in my life. Ugh.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

I know what you mean. I'm also in 10th grade. It's like you're just given a lot of information, of which 80% doesn't bother you anyways, and the interesting 20% of information is meaningless, it's not explained why that information is as it is. I want to know why and how things have been found out, and what the use of those things are. Not just know the information needed for a test. It's stupid. It makes me rage a little occasionally.

I think it's common for INTPs, and you'll just have to go through it.

PS: Are you also annoyed by the majority of other students? They're all so predictable and empty. They all have the same hobbies and clothes, they all fear rejection of the big herd of ignorance. And oh how weird we are with our bad grades and witty comments.

 

[Andropov]

At a place near me you can take the GED even if you're not 18 and basically get a high school diploma. I could then go on to community college for 2 years and finally transfer to a university. Is this viable? Has anyone done something like this before?

PS: Are you also annoyed by the majority of other students? They're all so predictable and empty. They all have the same hobbies and clothes, they all fear rejection of the big herd of ignorance. And oh how weird we are with our bad grades and witty comments.

Definitely.

 

[Andropov]

I'm actually not sure if it is the GED, it might be some other high school equivalence test. I'll find out more tomorrow.

 

[Firehazard159]

So many words!

Yeah, I was bored in high school, too. My grades suffered because of it, and I dropped out of college twice because the boredom doesn't stop there.

Um... but don't fret and stuff?

You can always live a life of desperation and be broke until you do something desperate like join the military.

I lol'ed, and quoted for truth.

I think I ended up with a 2.8 GPA, because I refused to do homework outside of school itself - aka, school was work, and work was to be done at work, not home. I'd get about 25-75% of most assignments done in class, working on them in classes unrelated to the subject (aka, english in math class, and math in english class to get it done for the next period, which was math.)

Which upset most of my teachers.

All I can say is, really, like space yeti said - learn to deal with it, or learn to accept non-success until you can push yourself through drudgery, because that's what life pretty much amounts to.

If you want to seek active critical thinking, I would suggest either A. talking to your teachers about the problem - they might have suggestions themselves, or be able to set up a sort of 'study' group that just gathers for critical thinking, or research into the why and how of things.

or B. skip the teacher and set it up yourself. I'm sure your teachers would either be indifferent or encourage this sort of recreation anyway, and you could probably post up notices / recruitment things on their boards for any interested parties.

I have to say, I regret being the a stubborn idiot, and rebelling against the system like I did - as it only hurt myself. Of course, you might not be doing that, but you *are* hurting yourself by not doing homework, whatever the reason.

I know you don't really want to hear that, and probably won't listen/follow through, but if you do, good on you :P

 

[Synthesis]

As a junior in high school, I advocate the same message others have: grin and bear it. High school is the largest stepping stone insofar as flexing one's intellect is concerned. Yes, the school system in America is dreadful (almost incomprehensibly inefficient, to some) but it is what you have to work with at this moment. Make the most of it while it's there, because it's doubtful you will find an easier system to excell at.

As most here have probably done, independent research has its merits - perhaps you might try this if you aren't already? I will admit to knowing little about your preferred careers, but having the diligence to expand on your knowledge without guidance is a useful skill to have.

Good luck with your endeavors, regardless.

 

[Methuselah]

High school sucks. College is somewhat better. Both are pretty much just social holding tanks that society puts adolescents in so they can mature and gain a few skills along the way.

My best advice to you is to never expect school or work to be fun. Don't expect it to be meaningful either. School is a bunch of BS hoops they make you jump through to prove that you can. When I began to look at it that way, it became a lot easier. For me it was a game... how can I get the best marks with the least effort. With work, realize that it's a way to make money so that when you aren't making money you can do whatever you want.

People who expect school and work to entertain them will be sorely disappointed, over and over. And "doing what you love" is a great way to learn how to hate it. Do what you love on your own time and focus on making yourself indispensable when it comes to work.

And I'm sorry that the system sucks so much. I too have been fed through the gears of society. The trick is learning to make it work for you. I really think that learning to work the system is a fundamental turning point for most INTPs, if they can make it to that point.

 

[Andropov]

Say I started doing well in High School, what would be final GPA be, about? Say I have a 2.0 now.

 

[Methuselah]

Say I started doing well in High School, what would be final GPA be, about? Say I have a 2.0 now.

If you are in the middle of 10th now, you could easily clear 3.0, maybe something like 3.2 or 3.4 if you're lucky. Getting straight As is surprisingly easy once you've set your mind on it. I only had three Bs in college, and in those classes I got sloppy/lazy.

 

[PINT]

Visit this site and get one or more of the books listed.

Then, escape! Public school is no place for an INTP. You need to follow your own path, starting today, and stop letting boring teachers waste your life. They do NOT know what's best for you! They don't even have a clue.

 

[Andropov]

Visit this site and get one or more of the books listed.

Then, escape! Public school is no place for an INTP. You need to follow your own path, starting today, and stop letting boring teachers waste your life. They do NOT know what's best for you! They don't even have a clue.

I'd do this instantly if it weren't for the fact that it would seriously hurt my chances at college. Who would accept a high school dropout? And plus, if I learn as much as I would if I had that much free time, I'd just be bored in college re-learning everything I've learned then. Know what I mean? Did you do this? What's your situation now?

 

[Ermine]

I'd do this instantly if it weren't for the fact that it would seriously hurt my chances at college. Who would accept a high school dropout? And plus, if I learn as much as I would if I had that much free time, I'd just be bored in college re-learning everything I've learned then. Know what I mean? Did you do this? What's your situation now?

This wasn't directed toward me, but I'm pretty sure you can test out of a lot of basic college courses. Either the test is provided by the college, or there's AP, CLEP, and the like. I'm pretty sure you can take these tests if you don't take the associated class. You just have to pay the test fee. This is what I did for one of my AP tests. Also, taking such tests would show the college you apply to that you are serious about learning despite/because you dropped out of high school. This could also be explained in the often required personal essay in college applications.

 

[Trebuchet]

I could go on and on about all the other things wrong with the system, like how school starts at 7:00 AM so I have to wake up at 5:30 to catch the bus (Which comes at 6:20). Teenagers should get about 10 hours a sleep a day from what my doctors tell me, but that's not really feasible at all since that would mean I'd have to go to sleep at 7:30 PM. I hate going to school. I hate it more than any other thing in my life. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm thinking of maybe dropping out and becoming an autodidact but I doubt I'd get into college.

On the subject of sleep, that is possibly one of the worst things about your situation. Here's an article by Po Bronson about that. The article will make you angry, I expect, but will also present interesting studies that will validate your opinions, and that's always nice. Eight hours seems to be enough sleep for many teens, but they rarely get even 7 hours these days. Here are a couple of excerpts to get you hooked.

The performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the normal gap between a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader. Which is another way of saying that a slightly sleepy sixth-grader will perform in class like a mere fourth-grader. “A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development,” Sadeh explains.​

Convinced by the mountain of studies, a handful of school districts around the nation are starting school later in the morning. The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable. “Truly flabbergasting,” said Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s executive director for SAT Program Relations, on hearing the results.

Another trailblazing school district is Lexington, Kentucky’s, which also moved its start time an hour later. After the time change, teenage car accidents in Lexington were down 16 percent. The rest of the state showed a 9 percent rise.​

Anyway, my sympathy that you are having such a hard time. I used to entertain myself in high school by trying to manipulate my teachers into doing what I wanted, asking questions that interested me even if they disrupted class a bit, and letting older kids cheat off me. Find some way to get through it and graduate. If you can, get A's, because it will be useful later when you apply for college or some jobs.

 

[PINT]

I'd do this instantly if it weren't for the fact that it would seriously hurt my chances at college. Who would accept a high school dropout? And plus, if I learn as much as I would if I had that much free time, I'd just be bored in college re-learning everything I've learned then. Know what I mean? Did you do this? What's your situation now?

We are homeschooling our teenage daughter. Homeschooled kids rarely have any trouble getting into college.

Is homeschooling permitted where you live?

 

[The Journey]

I'm a 10th grader going to a pretty decent High School as far as High Schools go. There's no violence and the area surrounding the school is mostly upper-middle class.

The problem is that High School is really boring and rote. In most classes, the procedure is sit to down and take notes until the class is over. There's no intellectual stimulation whatsoever. And the information in the notes themselves is completely useless. We learn words and their connections with other words, but not what they really, actually mean. For instance, we're learning about the Ultraviolet index. The teacher explains the different UV index levels and their corresponding numbers and colors. But what does the UV index really measure? How are the numbers derived? The information is meaningless. You might as well memorize arbitrary strings of numbers. Richard Feynman talked about this problem in the Brazillian education system in his autobiography and it seems like it's happening here too.

Math is probably the worst offender since all the problems require you to do is to plug in the variables and write down the output. Most students don't even know what they're doing, they just do it since that's what the teacher tells you to do. It's like some sort of factory or something. I have a very strong mathematical intuition and want to either become a mathematician (non-applied) or some sort of scientist but as of now I'm doing extremely poorly in math class (I think I have a D). It doesn't help that I already know most of what we're doing anyway from independent study.

I don't know what my GPA is but I doubt it's higher than a 2.5. I do well on tests and quizzes but I almost never do homework, which is worth 50% of the entire grade in some classes. I don't know what to do. My goal is, as I said before, to be either a professor of math or science (Either physics or chemical engineering) or maybe even a writer or historian. Maybe even a philosopher. My SAT score was around 1900 in 7th grade but that was before I even knew basic algebra so it's probably much higher now. If I continue going to school, what kind of college do I have a chance at going to? Say if I have a 2.5 GPA and a 2200 SAT score. From there, I'll hopefully go to graduate school somewhere better.

There are honors classes available but that's only if you have an A- or better in the regular classes. And even then, from what I've heard, the honors classes are just more memorization and regurgitation, not more critical thinking. I'm in only one honors class (Language arts) and even though it's my favorite class (not my favorite subject) it's filled with incredibly pretentious, pompous fools who constantly spout unfunny 4chan memes and lame pi jokes. Their writing, from paper swap edits, is so bad that it's literally uncomfortable to read. It's filled with completely inappropriately complex words with no regard to "flow" or anything of that sort. The people in normal classes aren't much better. They're either really unintelligent or try way too hard to be badass. I'm pretty confident in social situations and am not at all shy, but there's only about 15 likable people in my entire school.

I could go on and on about all the other things wrong with the system, like how school starts at 7:00 AM so I have to wake up at 5:30 to catch the bus (Which comes at 6:20). Teenagers should get about 10 hours a sleep a day from what my doctors tell me, but that's not really feasible at all since that would mean I'd have to go to sleep at 7:30 PM. I hate going to school. I hate it more than any other thing in my life. I don't know what to do at this point. I'm thinking of maybe dropping out and becoming an autodidact but I doubt I'd get into college.

Anyway, this was pretty sloppily written and probably has some grammar and spelling mistakes but I'm pretty tired so there it is. I know other INTPs may have had similar experiences. Help!

Suck it up dude, you do whatever is needed, a lot of high school students have to wake up at 5:30 to take the bus, but they don't complain.

Sure you might get a 2200 on an SAT, but GPA tells more of your character, if you are willing to do the work. Colleges don't want the smartest students, they want smart students who are willing to put in the work and not bitch about it.

You have no one to blame but yourself, blaming other people or things for the situation you have put yourself into just shows that you need to be more mature.

 

[Anchorite]

^In all fairness he didn't create the schools schedule, He didn't design the physical needs of the teenage body, and he didn't initiate the flawed teaching style that is prevalent throughout public schools in this country and many others.
And those other students that have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning do tend to complain if you've ever met one. Not to mention the fact that complaining can be a healthy alternative to holding in your' frustrations which inhibit work efficiency.

 

[gruesomebrat]

Mmm, hearing that other students have to get up at 5-ish for school is what makes me so glad I have a first -period spare. I feel sorry for all the younger high-schoolers that don't have that option, but once you get into 11 and 12, that spare can be a real lifesaver.

 

[indigofireflies]

I know how you feel. I'm in the same year as you are, but most of my classes are advanced/AP. I would recommend extra-curricular mathematics classes, say, online if you're really looking for stimulation. English is my strength -- Math is my penultimate weakness. Even if it's just writing BS, do the homework. It'll pay off so much if you get a good grade/GPA in high school. It's just a four year blip out of seventy or so years. Make it worth it.

 

[The Journey]

^In all fairness he didn't create the schools schedule, He didn't design the physical needs of the teenage body, and he didn't initiate the flawed teaching style that is prevalent throughout public schools in this country and many others.
And those other students that have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning do tend to complain if you've ever met one. Not to mention the fact that complaining can be a healthy alternative to holding in your' frustrations which inhibit work efficiency.

Life isn't fair.

OP needs to learn to suck it up and adjust to his situation.

If he can't even deal with trivial problems like this in high-school, he's not going to get anywhere in life.

Flipping burgers positions in McDonalds are getting more competitive day by day.

 

[pjoa09]

talk about intellectual stimulation.

dont even dare dropout.

public school = fine yeah its pretty well boring.
your average desk job = what do you think? fairy tale? for fucksake, its a creativity butcher. (yeah they do it properly, the whole scalding, slitting, all the way up to selling it)

maybe get a job at convenience store.
our brains are NOT welcomed in this world.

once you taste the real deal you would want to lock yourself up with pencils and a big fat notebook. not because you want to write the misery but actually its way more fun than this.

 

[Anchorite]

Life isn't fair.

OP needs to learn to suck it up and adjust to his situation.

If he can't even deal with trivial problems like this in high-school, he's not going to get anywhere in life.

Flipping burgers positions in McDonalds are getting more competitive day by day.

He said he's doing decently so it seems to me like he can deal with it. And why does everybody shit all over burger flippers? We need those people, it's a perfectly respectable job. The only reason stupid nonsense in areas of public education and government aren't changed is because the willingly subservient suck-it-up types are to numerous and don't whine and get pissed off at the realities that are forced upon us when they don't have to be.
Get pissed off. Get rebellious. It's empowering. Fuck the situation, with the right mind-set there's no reason we can't create our own situations.

 

[Andropov]

Just got Marking Period 1 grades today... I failed most of my classes. I'd say my GPA has gone down below 2.0.

I saw some people on facebook talking about their Advanced Placement history class and it seemed really interesting. They were learning about Enlightenment philosophers and their ideas about how government should be run.

If I was in AP or honors classes I'd do much better. My highest grade for MP1 was in Honors English, a B, even though most people did very poorly in her class (Class average was a C-). But again, you have to have an A- or better in the regular classes to go into honors or AP.

So even if I get all A+s this year, it would be impossible to get into honors/AP for grade 11. I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. Dropping out is quickly becoming the optimal solution. I tried convincing them to put me in a higher level class before, but they won't listen. I don't know how to convince them.

 

[Bird]

Why don't you work hard now, get your
gpa up, keep your gpa up junior year,
take ap classes senior year.


And then once you graduate high school,
you can go to a nice university where you
will get that intellectual stimulation you seek.


Why would you rather give up than fix your
problems?

 

[SpaceYeti]

Fixing problems can be very tedious and annoying. It's still obviously better fixing them than ignoring them, in the long run, of course, but that you seemed to be asking why someone would, and that would likely be why in this case. I didn't say it was a good reason.

 

[Bird]

Thank you Monsieur Yeti,

I was however hoping that OP
would provide me with a logical
explanation in which this is beneficial
to his future.


this referring to dropping out
of high school.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Logical reason to drop out of school? I'd like to see that, too.

 

[The Journey]

Just got Marking Period 1 grades today... I failed most of my classes. I'd say my GPA has gone down below 2.0.

I saw some people on facebook talking about their Advanced Placement history class and it seemed really interesting. They were learning about Enlightenment philosophers and their ideas about how government should be run.

If I was in AP or honors classes I'd do much better. My highest grade for MP1 was in Honors English, a B, even though most people did very poorly in her class (Class average was a C-). But again, you have to have an A- or better in the regular classes to go into honors or AP.

So even if I get all A+s this year, it would be impossible to get into honors/AP for grade 11. I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. Dropping out is quickly becoming the optimal solution. I tried convincing them to put me in a higher level class before, but they won't listen. I don't know how to convince them.

Seriously, be honest with yourself. If you can't even do homework in regular classes, do you really think you will do well in AP classes?

I took AP Stats, Physics, Chem, and Calc AB in HS and let me tell you, if you aren't willing to do the homework, you will absolutely fail the class.

Just because you're an INTP does not mean you are inherently better than other people in higher-level classes, so stop lying to yourself.

You have to prove you are able to handle the workload to get into AP classes, if you just lie on your ass all day and complain complain complain, you have no right to ask your counselor or teacher to put you in AP classes.

Get off your ass, do your homework, prove to your teachers that you can handle AP classes.

You put yourself in this situation, no one is going to get you out of it except yourself. Dropping out is not the solution.

 

[IfloatTHRUlife]

To keep it short and sweet, i hated school so i didn't apply myself, my average GPA throughout both middle and high school was around 1.2 or so. I dropped out when i was 16. My life has suffered ever since.

Course who is to say it wouldnt have suffered even if i did finish. I would have just had to wait longer to bask in all of this wonderful misery.

 

[Linsejko]

English is my strength -- Math is my penultimate weakness.

You do realize that penultimate means next-to-last, right? As in, the penultimate syllable in "penultimate" is "tim".

To the OP: I "dropped out" of high school in the middle of eleventh grade because I was bored to death, going no where, and was found myself unattracted to the life that I was being directed to by public education. So I got my GED (Scores for reference on the five sub-tests: 99, 99, 99, 98, 95)

I ended up volunteering teaching English in a foreign country, which was great. I have now learned the language, and am in one of the best 100 universities in the world--which happens to be ridiculously cheap by American standards. I have also now taught myself 2 other languages *aside* from the one I do university in, and am working on language number 5 now. I did a personal film project where I filmed my life every day and would edit it and make music for it every night--though I didn't follow through with that, I'm sure a university would probably love something like that. I've become a relatively accomplished musician. I make a couple hundred dollars a month on the side tutoring people.

I'm turning 21 this month. I have no regrets. I guess it doesn't work out that way for everyone, but... It's your life.

Also, about university entrance... Universities love interesting kids, ones who showed initiative. Do some self education, produce interesting projects.

.L

 

[Linsejko]

YouTube - Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

YouTube - RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

.L

 

[The Journey]

The two videos are load of crap in my opinion.

 

[Linsejko]

Well, "The Journey", I find everything you've said in this thread to be a load of crap thus far, and I find myself valuing the opinion of a TED speaker more than you. But that's just my opinion.

.L

 

[gruesomebrat]

Journey, I'm curious. What part of these videos do you consider to be a "load of crap"? I think there's a lot of truth included in Sir Ken Robinson video, especially.

"Our task is to educate their whole being so they can face the future." This quote by Robinson, at the end of the video, is reminiscent of the school of thought in the Renaissance, back in the 1500's, widely regarded as a time of innovation. That is, innovative thinking. The number of discoveries in that time period so far outweighs what our society is currently producing, it doesn't bear thinking about. Many people blame the lack of scientific discoveries on the "fact" that all the easily observable discoveries have already been made, all the everyday phenomena explained. Yet, in the 1500's, this same thought prevailed. Everything that could be observed could easily be explained through the principles they believed to be true. Consider geocentrism. The idea that the Earth is at the center of the universe makes perfect sense. After all, without a knowledge of the principle of gravity, one would have to assume that the centrifugal force generated by the Earth spinning around the Sun would fling anything and everything that wasn't tied down off the Earth.

In today's society, regardless of how many new patents are issued each year, innovation is something that is severely lacking. Many of today's discoveries are in fields whose very nature makes the theories next to impossible to prove or disprove. I submit that no discovery in the past 100 years has been demonstrable. From evolution to string theory, every so-called scientific discovery in the past 100 years has, in truth, been no more than a scientific guess. Many of the theories that are coming forth now either deal with occurrences which take place on a molecular level (such as string theory, quantum physics, and the like), or that take place over millions or billions of years like evolution.

The phenomena that these theories attempt to explain are generally far beyond the average human's experience. In molecular "science", the phenomena which we observe are so miniature that we require microscopes that can show us something at 5,000 times magnification. The average person's science knowledge was learned with a microscope that goes up to 10 times magnification. How are everyday people supposed to see any benefit from these discoveries? The average human lifespan is less than 100 years, and yet evolution attempts to explain something that supposedly takes millions of years to occur. Who can honestly wrap their head around the idea of a million years, when the entirety of documented human history stretches back no more than ten thousand years?

Discoveries like the law of gravity, the laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics; these are relatively easily understood. They are easily demonstrable, and affect visible entities. Gravity explains why objects dropped from a height fall at the same rate of speed, the laws of motion explain why a wheel will only roll for so long on flat ground, thermodynamics explains why a cup of coffee left on the counter will cool off, aerodynamics explains how a bird can fly through the air, how a fish glides through water, with ease.

Today, innovation often seems to be synonymous with invention. The sad reality is that this is not strictly true. Innovation is "the process that renews [or changes] something that exists"(Wikipedia, Innovation) while invention is "a new composition, device, or process [which] may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or... could be independently conceived in which case it may be a radical breakthrough" (Wikipedia, Invention).

Innovative thinking can lead to invention, and often does, but the innovative thinking must come first, and in recent decades, we have seen very little of it. Considering that there are now nearly 7 billion people inhabiting planet Earth, as opposed to the 450-750 million people that were the world population in the 1500's to 1700's, one would think that we would see a rise in discoveries that shape our world. Unfortunately, thanks to a lack of creativity, this is not the case. Instead, we have seen a drop in new discoveries, and a subsequent rise in invention, based on old discoveries.

Creativity:innovative thinking::innovative thinking:invention.

While it is true that the number of inventions in the last century have skyrocketed, all these inventions are based on the innovative discoveries that came in the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. What happens when today's lack of creativity starts trickling down that line? I must agree with Sir Robinson, when he says that we must educate our children's whole being, rather than just the left side of the brain. While the maths and languages are important, especially if we want to encourage new scientific discoveries, fostering creativity must be the first step in the process.

 

[gruesomebrat]

Linsejko, thank you for posting these videos; they were incredibly thought-provoking, and I'm pretty sure that I learned a lot more out of them today, than I will learn in the next two weeks at school.

 

[drugsandpizza]

well, i'm doing kind of bad in high school, as well.
i'm also a 10th grader.
i'm pretty smart, or so i'd like to think.
i just get kind of lost in my own little world during class a lot of the time.
math bores me, spanish is alright, history is only fun because i talk a lot and make jokes, english sucks.
i used to love english.
but, basically i go to a good school- okay people- nothing wrong with the environment.
i don't think i'm dumb or anything. i do have a lot of home problems.
my mind's not AT school. it's off somewhere else almost 24/7.
school sucks, it bores me.
idk.
i need to improve, though. i don't want to fail anything this year.

 

[SpaceYeti]

In high school, my goal was to graduate...

Then I drifted for almost a decade and had to join the military to fix my financial problems.

 

[Andropov]

Thank you Monsieur Yeti,

I was however hoping that OP
would provide me with a logical
explanation in which this is beneficial
to his future.


this referring to dropping out
of high school.

Drop out - Spend my time in the library - Take GED at 18 - Go to community college for 2 years - Get good grades - Transfer to better university, get undergraduate degree - Go on to graduate school - Get Phd in physics or whatever I want to do by that point - Live life.

 

[Andropov]

If I didn't drop out but homeschooled myself, could I get in a decent college for my undergrad providing I do very well on the SATs (2200+)?

 

[SpaceYeti]

Drop out - Spend my time in the library - Take GED at 18 - Go to community college for 2 years - Get good grades - Transfer to better university, get undergraduate degree - Go on to graduate school - Get Phd in physics or whatever I want to do by that point - Live life.

That's a good plan if you drop out or get kicked out for some reason, but it's not a logical reason to drop out in the first place.