<p>I don't want to disappoint, but I think you should know that the Neopet stock exchange is nothing like the real world. A few years ago, I personally made millions of Neopoints trading those stocks. It's very predictable and easy to do.</p>
<p>That's pretty much why the Neo stock exchange crashed, because the staff found out how easy it was to earn neopoints. I was earning 500k np per day back during those days, and that was a lot of np.</p>
<p>calmom, yeah, out of my two daughters, the one in HS was a definitely Neopet addict, when she was in elementary, we caught that she did not have time to take shower/bath for 5 days(lol) because of this addiction.
I also lol when I read the post that you mentioned your son convinced all the teachers not to count homework, he sounded like me when I was in college. I too convinced my professors not to count homework and just count tests, I told them other students probably cheat on homework so tests are more fair(for me). I did not have time for homework because I spent my free time reading more books about the subjects that I took, not relying on textbook alone. Till this day, I still hate homework and never do any on any classes that I attended.</p>
<p>My daughter, a senior, took all adv/honors classes throughout her four years; took H Geometry as Fresh., H AlgII as a soph and went on from there, never having taken alegebra at all--and she hates math. What did I say about this? "What's wrong with you?" She's crazy--she put the pressure on herself for reasons that are her own, though I'm sure it must have something to do with how she was raised, though I can't fathom it. I think AP classes are an absurd idea--she only took APUSH, tried to get into APLIT but was denied and ended up loving her honors world lit class best of all the classes she took throughout her entire 4 years. Go figure. I think most of the pressure she puts on herself is generated by her own competetiveness with her peers (and actually by her sense of feeling less up against some students that she personally doesn't like all that much). People act out their inner struggles in different ways--take a look around, the world is full of them, people that is. Anyway, in highschool I never drove myself this way, but I had my own problems complete with their own particular stress quotients. It's pretty hard to escape if your a thinking being, unless you turn yourself into one of those invasion-of-the-body-snatcher types who just "go with the flow" all the way to oblivion. Good luck; and when you finally do get to that college that lies at the end of stress avenue, just make sure you're there because YOU want to be there.</p>
<p>Hi,
I never really look on this site except for when I'm stressed out. It helps me to know that I'm not the only one. I don't think that the stress to get into college can really be amended. I think that there isn't much we can do about except deal with it . It is a shame that kids no longer value education and learning. Rather than reading a book or learning something new out of interest, we are all thinking one thing: "how will this help me get into the top schools?" I am not saying we are all like this, but the vast majority are, and it is important to remember that in the end we determine our worth and our future. We all have complete control over what we end up doing, there are plenty of successful people out there who didn't even finish high school. It is determination, work and inspiration that gets you places. I don't think that this is very helpful to those who are looking for ways to deal with stress, but maybe it is something to think about. That maybe all of this isn't such a big deal, and that we should look for more in ourselves than a GPA - are we all starting to define ourselves by what school accepts us?</p>
<p>Currently, I am a Junior who is just finishing up the school year. I whole heartedly agree that high school can be a very stressful time.</p>
<p>If you are one of those students that strives for success and is hyper competitive with the rest of the student body, the majority of your stress will come from academics. If you have done very well in the past, not only your parents, but also your peers expect high quality work. They expect you to know everything. They expect you to get straight A's. You keep pushing yourself to be better than you can be in order to keep up with their expectations. And when you don't live up to their expectations, it'll feel like you have failed them, not yourself. Is it bad to be pushing yourself in order to satisfy others? Personally, I don't think it is. Sure it can sometimes be stressful but it'll be one of the best motivators that you can have to succeed in a challenging and rigorous course. By taking these advanced courses, you'll be exposed to a whole new world and do things you thought would be impossible. For example, I took AP Chemistry last year and by a large margin, it was the hardest class I've ever taken. I think that AP Chemistry is the hardest class we have at our school period. I'm usually an A student but going into AP Chem, my test scores were abysmal and for the first time, I was struggling my way out of a D. Now however, as I reflect back on AP Chem, it was the most enlightening and funnest class I've ever had. So sure, you'll be pushing yourself for others, but you are the one benefitting from it.</p>
<p>So what should high schoolers do? Don't cut down on your challenging classes and constant pushing, but find ways to cut down on the stress. It is possible to have a rigorous course load and still maintain a reasonable stress level. Have some fun once in a while. Go to a party. Go hang out with friends. Go play some video games. Many people see these as a waste of time. I see these as important stress relievers.</p>
<p>Take yoga. Breath in/Breath out slowly 100 times.</p>
<p>I think, as someone mentioned, the important thing is balance. The balance is likely to be fine if the child is the one deciding to take all the advanced classes and do music or sports. If parents or counselors or whoever put the pressure on them to do more than they want, then that's where the trouble comes. People know what they can handle, and what they are willing to handle. I went through countless stressful nights in high school, running on 3 hours of sleep, and sometimes on none. But I knew that I was doing all of this because I wanted to do it, not for someone else. Sure it would have been nicer to go to sleep for 7 hours a night, but that wouldn't have paid off for me in the long run.</p>
<p>But then you run into the problems of the kids who aren't as self motivated, like someone mentioned, who were in their 20s and complaining that their parents hadn't pushed them hard enough. There's clearly a fine line between pushing hard enough and pushing too hard. Only problem is the line is buried under the sand, not apparent at all, and can take some pushing, pulling and digging to get to, if it is ever found at all.</p>
<p>I wonder if Andi lives in the same town I do. We are also deciding about the worth of the weighted GPA. I can offer one thought that my friend shared - she is on the admissions com. at MIT - they DO look at weighted GPAs. Yes, they assign their own worth to grades, but during the initial review, when they have thousands of apps to look at, they do condsider weighted GPAs if they are indeed part of the transcript. This shows them how diffifult the applicants course selections have been. In our school, both the unweighted and weighted are listed. They are trying to do away with students taking hard courses just to raise their weighted GPA and also because kids taking regular leveled courses are feeling badly about themselves. All classes, not just the honors and AP are rigorous at our HS.</p>
<p>Much stress certainly comes from the school systems, IMHO. My complaint is with Ranking, not with Weighting.</p>
<p>The following happened to us when S was in 9th grade, and, I think, illustrates that school culture aimed at ranking kids smacks students in the face when they arrive in HS and is hard to escape by students who are required to stay put 6 hours a day: </p>
<p>9th grade Honors Science Teacher says, at parent - teacher meeting in November, ... "Your son has missed an assignment." We reply, "He has never missed assignments in the past..." Sci. teach completely avoids our comment, and states, "It's a competitive world out there, he shouldn't be throwing away homework points." </p>
<p>Now forget about whether S had missed assignment or not (he had not); I think this focus on competition was not limited to this one teacher, and I think it pervades our school systems nationwide. And, I think it is bad when it overwhelms the focus on learning.</p>
<p>1) This teacher was all about the competition, even in 9th grade. We realized he was ranking kids immediately upon their first few weeks' showing in high school. We could almost smell the culture of competition. It stunk. </p>
<p>2) This competitive approach to school came from school staff, not us and not our kid. We felt emotionally slapped at this meeting. Our stunned response was, "Forget competition, what is he learning? If he gets, say, a B (oh horror!???), will he have learned (((- hello - LEARNING??))) ... will he have learned what basics he needs at this point in his education? Learning seemed less relevant than positioning. </p>
<p>3) Look at the overall culture in this country. What are we teaching our young people? What do we want to teach them? Do the ends justify the means? Are we creating an ENRON mentality? Just make the buck, make the grade, make the bottom line look good regardless of substance...? We are teaching something when we focus our schools on competition, when we make rank so important. </p>
<p>4) My recommendation: Do away with class ranking. Go ahead and weight grading, because tougher classes are, well, heavier. You learn more content, and are expected to produce more content. However, this system of ranking children completely misses the point that each individual student is different from the next one, and should be taking a course load that reflects his/her apptitudes and interests. How can you rank kids best to worst when you should be encouraging a branching set of experiences?</p>
<p>5) So, what does it mean to be in the top 10% of your class? Are you really one of the best 10%? Maybe. Maybe not.</p>
<p>I totally hate class rank too. I'm a sophomore and I came from a school where I was only able to take one honors course as a freshman. At my new school they all loaded up with weighted courses as freshmen. So therefore no matter how hard I try it's nearly impossible to break into the top ten percent because my school is very competitive, coupled with that circumstance.</p>
<p>"Much stress certainly comes from the school systems, IMHO. My complaint is with Ranking, not with Weighting.</p>
<p>The following happened to us when S was in 9th grade, and, I think, illustrates that school culture aimed at ranking kids smacks students in the face when they arrive in HS"</p>
<p>D high school will not rank, will not weight GPA, will not calculate GPA. When talking to ADCOM, informed that they will base information on the reputation of her "great school" according to school profile. Not sure what that means??</p>
<p>However, the school profile does not specifically name students, but the histogram of the profile certainly uses GPA for its graph. I wish D school would rank, calculate GPA and weight grades.</p>
<p>Our school is not hypercompetitive, but I have the same general complaint as firsttimemom. At Back to School night when the teachers speak to the parents, with very few exceptions, they talk about the grading and what percent will count from hw, tests, etc. They talk about bonus points and extra credit. Very few (there are some exceptions) talk about the content of the course and what the students will be learning. I find this disappointing and frustrating, but it seems that few if any of the other parents are interested in the actual course content. When I have talked to the teachers privately, they seem surprised at my questions about these things.</p>
<p>MotherOfTwo, I agree. It becomes a study of numerology and priority, rather than learning.</p>
<p>At my school only core classes count towards the GPA because some electives aren't weighted.</p>
<p>Therefore people will get a 70 in Spanish 3, and get a 92 in English PreAP, just for the sake of class rank. Don't regard the difficulty levels of those courses as reason to disagree, they are merely examples.</p>
<p>I think school has become a lot less about learning, more about reputation and numerology. My school spends much time preparing for the TAKS test, a state examination that covers very basic material that I don't need review for. Yet for my school's reputation, I have to sit in class for days learning test taking strategies, and reviewing unbelievably rudimentary material.</p>
<p>i am currently a junior and just took 2 out of the 3 AP tests so far. i have to admit that this year has been extremely stressful, but i know a lot of that has to do with my commitment to my swim team, (which practices six days a week for 2-3 hrs a day) and being vice prez of my class. i knew this before this year began, but i've always enjoyed learning.</p>
<p>i was glad to choose to take AP Chem over AP Bio, even though most honors-level juniors in my school take AP Bio because it is 'easier' and the teacher typically offers higher grades. even though the class was harder, and i did not receive the higher averages my friends in bio received, it made me less concerned about my GPA and rank. i was happy to take a class that i actually enjoyed. i think this is very important.</p>
<p>i also think it is unfair for schools to get rid of the weighting in AP and honors-level courses.</p>
<p>motheroftwo: i think that is extremely valid point and i wish more people took that into consideration.</p>
<p>Yeah, Hilary. I was reading about this girl named Dinh Phan (Princeton Review Eye on Apply segment and yeah, I googled for her last name). She is doing an INCREDIBLE AMOUNT of things!</p>
<p>But the only real difference between her and you is that she is actually ENJOYING it. </p>
<p>You can still be happy and not lazy at the same time. If you are failing honors english, then you need to drop out. If you're doing well in it, you should find something about it that you like. And of course, there are things in life that we just have to do whether love it or not. You're young, but that doesn't mean you cannot enjoy your youth.</p>
<p>calmom - our hs no longer has honors classes for sophs...</p>
<p>wow, i just came back from taking the SATs this morning (don't get me started on those) to find that my post is thriving...and even made the front page of the college discussion! haha :)... ok so im going to try to respond to as many of the posts as i can</p>
<p>nunofyurbeesknees and carolyn and the others who understood where i was coming from ~ thank you!</p>
<p>andi--haha we probably live in adjacent towns or something; theres consideration [though not very strong] of dropping weights at our school as well, but even stronger consideration of dropping APs altogether, since a lot of the honors classes are acutally considered better anyway.</p>
<p>klc voiced something that was implied by others too--
[quote]
i tell my kids that everyone is going to have to work and there will be stress, so yep, you may have to play 10 less videogames or 10 less phonecalls/emails ... oh well! doing well in hs will keep your options open and otherwise, what's the point? if you want to be a sanitation engineer (gainfully employed & a completely helpful service to mankind!) that's great, having As & Bs in hs wont prevent you from attaining that dream.... whereas if you want to be a college prof, you'll have to overcome those C's & D's and start getting As & Bs eventually, so why wait?
[/quote]
the thing is that i DO get As and Bs in honors courses (next year i'm taking 3 APs and English honors again which is the highest level at our school, and which i'm taking this year as well). And the fact is that i absolutely LOVE my english class, even it is difficult. <em>note: i was not the one who wrote the catch-22 paper, but i think it is a universal feeling for students today in at least 1 class. in my english class we write 7-page thesis papers regularly, but i love writing, and so even though its a bit stressful, i don't mind because i enjoy being challenged in a subject i'm excited about. i also write in my free time.<br>
the point is not that I don't wnat to work hard and do well, the point is that i'm wondering (more universally) why people take classes they hate just to get into a good colllege. its frusterating for me to hear people complaining about their hatred of writing... i want to say, well why are you in this class then? but the fact is that i do almost the same thing...i am in honors math, and i dont enjoy math very much either. we do it because we want to get into good college, or, like the kid in the catch-22 essay said, because we want to make our family proud of us. we also do it because we see people around us achieving perfection in the most difficult courses (there are 6 people in my highschool, which is one of the top 2 best public schools in massachusetts, who have 5.0 GPAs, and have taken all the available honors AND AP classes...granted none of them have much of a life outside of school, but how am i, with my seemingly pitiful 3 honors courses and 2 regular level courses, supposed to compare?)(we can only take history/bio AP junior year). or for another example, i was talking to a kid about SATIIs the other day, and he actually had the ardacity to say, "ugh i'm so </em>*ed about getting a 790 on my math (level 2, the toughest level) SATII"...
its this combination of factors that makes kids like me, who really love to learn things and plan to go to a top (but not ivy) school (my 1st choice is emory), but who DO get B's, feel insufficient. as if it didnt matter that i'm the captain of the swimteam, spend hours each week working on individual creative writing, or actually enjoy doing community service, because all of this nonsense is only going to count a laughable 10% on my college application. or the fact that i have friends, and yeah, maybe that i do spend time with them on the weekends rather than studying for yet another history test.. should i not bother because this doesnt count for anything on that piece of paper that will apparently be determining my entire future?
the answer is no, and it seems obvious... but why, then, are people still not getting it? why are straight-a honors student surreptitiously buying adderall, an illegal-unless-prescribed amphetamine, just so they can stay up all night studying for a test? why are formerly happy kids turning into anti-social mental cases whose fingers seem permanantly cemented to their Official SAT Study Guide? why are kids making themselves miserable and destroying their self esteem, as well as taking time away from the things they truly enjoy, to take the most difficult levels of classes in subjects they detest?
here are the questions, but what are the answers? of course people who work hard should be rewarded (we do have weighted GPAs as well, and i do agree they should be there). of course you have to work hard to succeed. and of course a ltitle stress is good for you (and some people thrive on a lot of stress). but the question is, when is it going too far. the dean of admissions from MIT visited our school and told us to calm down-- that is teh point to which our stress level has reached. the american pediatric association said that stress is taking a frightening toll on teenagers. no, we arent dying of aids or experiencing tsunamis, nor am i downplaying these awful events in any way. in fact, i'm saying the opposite: why can't we spend time trying to help these epople? oh right, beacuse we are too busy studying for our AP exams, or writing our thesis paper, or studying trignonometry.
its time to realize that the advice "suck it up" is no longer cutting it. we've been sucking it up, but ridiculous levels of stress and skewed priorities are sucking the life out of teenagers today.
taking it down a notch will not make a kid end up in community college and eventually scrubbing toilets at mcdonalds. for me, it would allow more time to do what i love and what makes me happy-- writing, community service, travel, friends, family, fun-- rahter than wasting away trying to meet the standards that are forever moving higher. and i think that everyone deserves to be happy.</p>
<p>I agree that high school has become more and more competitive. But I also think that this competitiveness is good. Even in a hypercompetitive atmosphere, there is nothing that says you can't learn. If you don't learn, then how can you even compete with the others? You won't know your material and sooner or later, it'll show in test results and eventually, your final grade. So although school has become a rank race, a lot of learning still takes place.</p>
<p>Another comment on ranking/weighting:</p>
<p>One of the problem with weighted grades is that it also favors the student who takes less classes overall, if there are a greater percentage of weighted classes. Extra non-weighted classes will dilute the total. Depending on the number of classes students ordinarily take at a school - and the school's policy about open periods - it can really hurt kids who regularly participate in classes like band or other electives.</p>
<p>I think a better system would be unweighted grades, with some additional statistics reported. The additional stats would include:
Total number of credits overall
Total number/percentage of academic credits
Total number/percentage of AP/honors credits</p>
<p>So then a college might see 2 students from the same school, and they would see:
Student A. GPA 3.7<br>
Total Credits: 180
Academic Credits: 130/ 72.2%
AP/Honors: 40 / 22.2%</p>
<p>Student B. GPA 3.9
Total Credits: 160
Academic Credits: 120 / 75%
AP Honors: 40 / 25%</p>
<p>So, in the above example, both students are taking the same number of AP classes, but you can see at a glance that the student with the lower GPA has had a significantly heavier courseload. </p>
<p>I also think they should do away with ranking - at graduation they can honor all students who have a certain GPA -- that is, in an unweighted system, everyone with a 4.0 would be a co-valedictorian. Or, to select the valedictorian, they could start with highest GPA,then look to see who has the most credits, and after that look to see which has the highest number of APs. I realize that even this is arbitrary, but I personally feel that the number of credits overall is slightly more significant than level of difficulty of the courses, especially when you take into account that "difficulty" is a relative term, given individual strengths and talents.</p>