Walden

    At the beginning of the year, before I even took Nagaoka's AP English Class, everyone who was taking his class as well was under the pretense we weren't going to pass the English exam. All the comments from previous classes said that he wasn't a good teacher, blah blah blah. But I find it kind of funny, he is a mediocre teacher, but he always emphasized that we should not lose sleep over an exam or class, nor should we take as many of those classes as possible. But it's true, the current college entrance requirements are kind of pointless.

      And it makes sense, what is even the purpose of taking so many AP classes of them? I know it's because either
     a) everyone else is doing them
     b)  without any of them, you won't get into a "decent college"
     c) both   
But it's not fair, what about those people that take 6 AP classes and pass them all while probably only enjoying one of them? How far do they even get? Bill Gates took none and made Microsoft. Fucking crazy.
        I used to be under the illusion that the more AP classes you take, the better. It was a naive and very stupid idea. (But thank god all the ones I took I enjoyed)

  What I'm getting at is that, why should people sacrifice self-happiness to appeal to colleges? Why should we take a bunch of classes that we don't enjoy to appeal to a bunch of white clad suits whose student's future rests upon their hands. I think college to me, sounds like a really ideal place meet and learn, but I just find that the way to get there is so fucking stupid.
  
    For example, I find the SAT Reasoning test completely useless. In society, it's usually branded as an IQ test, but it's not. It's a ridiculous test that measures nothing. The Writing section of the test asks nit-picky questions regarding English that hardly any American-person knows instinctly. All people born in the country speak informally and probably don't know the mechanics of the language. But why should that judge a person's ability?  Does a person that scores 2400 have a better chance than someone that scores 2000? Probably not. And all those SAT classes that have sprung up to prepare students for the test? Just another way to cash in on people's insecurities of scoring low. They may work, but the price for these schools are just ridiculous.

      There is a difference between hard work and torturing yourself. Hard work is doing a task can be done but requires more effort, torturing yourself is just doing something because you're forced to do it but you hate the hell out of it. Hard work is spending the extra time making your dinner tastier, while torture is spending the extra time making dinner for your boss--- whom you hate.

  I won't lose sleep over what I scored on the AP English exam (although I felt pretty kick ass on it) I won't let it cloud my mind [However I personally like English]. If you put in all you could and scored a 1, then there's nothing you can do about it. It's funny because I finally truly realized this after Nagaoka kept repeating it, I always had fragments of these ideas, but sometimes I felt it was  just me being lazy to do things I didn't like. But it's true, why should I lose sleep doing things I don't enjoy doing. Life is short, I don't want to die knowing that I wasted half my life working for some idiot and wallowing in misery because I should have quit my job earlier. It's true sometimes in life you might have to appeal to people briefly, but you should never let them take complete charge, you should always be able to retain individual happiness.


do what you love doing and eff the rest.