<p>I'm a high school senior this year, and I'm loving all of my classes, except for one. In addition to my four AP classes and semi-interesting classes, I'm taking Senior Survival because my guidance counselor couldn't figure out what to put me in. I figured, "Oh, that class will be easy. I'll get to learn things that will help me out after high school but it'll be easy enough for me to relax a bit in." Now, I've been stuck in it for nearly a month and I'm fighting my guidance counselor to get out.</p>
<p>I expected the class to be pretty easy. I didn't expect for the teacher to make us do busy work on things that are common sense and obvious. For example, last week we had to take two pages of notes on a book called "How to Select a College Major". The two main points of what we took notes on: 1) do not select a college major in a subject you aren't good in, 2) don't expect to be guaranteed a job and great salary just because you got a Bachelors degree. (I never would've figured those two things out for myself if I hadn't written two pages of notes about them.) Another day, we 'learned' that apparently we aren't supposed to wear short shorts or revealing shirts to go to an interview (never would've guessed that one either if it hadn't been for the notes we took on it). </p>
<p>So, now that I'm done complaining about Senior Survival, my question is: Have you taken a course that you feel is a complete waste of your time?</p>
<p>BCIS. I don’t know what it stands for, and my counselor put me in it by herself. It’s just typing and programs like Word and Powerpoint. It’s a joke, especially since I’m more technologically advanced than most. After all, I do live in a part of America where technology isn’t used to its full potential compared to where I lived before (Seattle area).</p>
<p>Every English class I’ve ever taken… I’m taking Creative Writing this year as a blow off (long story) and I hate it because the teacher is a ridiculous grader. Sometimes she’ll be lenient and other times you’ll ten points on a twenty point paper for writing dived instead of dove.</p>
<p>Communicating through the Arts (my teacher wasn’t sure what we were supposed to learn either, so we really just had roundtable discussions about Election 08… interesting in and of itself, but had nothing to do with the class)</p>
<p>Gym… + two whole semesters of health.</p>
<p>Principles of Engineering (don’t even ask), Spanish II and Spanish III.</p>
<p>Ed Academy. My counselor said it’d be a good course since I’m interested in teaching. The other day we had to draw a big smiley face and put posotive words inside the smiley, I kid you not.</p>
<p>As of this year, it is now a requirement at my school to take Family and Consumer Science 101. I don’t know what they do exactly in that class, but it’s supposedly about decision-making and child care. Probably because of all of the pregnant girls we have in our school. You get a book with worksheets in it that you can tear out and turn in, just like in elementary school.</p>
<p>We also have to get a technology credit, which isn’t so bad because there are a lot of choices (like home page, video production, and digital photography), but I still don’t believe that it should be a requirement.</p>
<p>My theatre arts class last year also ended up being a joke. In the beginning of the year we actually did stuff, but by the second nine weeks, we pretty much just watched movies that the teacher liked. It was the teacher’s first year teaching it. </p>
<p>And gym and health are of course stupid because in gym we hardly ever do anything, and in health you don’t actually learn anything.</p>
<p>And computer apps. I’m so mad about that class. My counselor told me it was a required course if I wanted to take Photography (which I already knew I wanted to take, because it’s the only art elective that sounded interesting to me). So I suffered through a year of that class. The class was easy though, and eventually I found a really good friend who I talked to all period, so that was alright.</p>
<p>Now as a senior I’m finally taking Photography and I found out it wasn’t a required course at all, only recommended. Now, as someone who can already type at an average of 80 wpm and is a master of the Microsoft programs, I didn’t need to take computer apps. I was teaching the teacher how to do things for goodness sakes! I’m so ****ed now.</p>