The World of Stuff .com

Bah! Bah, bah, college, bah bah

Applying to college is a really laborious task. I don’t care what you say. It is. I know I won’t think so years from now, but I won’t be applying to colleges years from now. I was just taking some time to review the only application I’ve started working on so far, and I realized that I need to know how much credit each of my current courses affords me. My sister told me I have to get a copy of my transcript from the Guidance department. There’s a three-day waiting period.

And you know what? If I didn’t have a sibling applying to college at the same time as me, I never would have known that. The thing about applying to colleges is that they make it as hard as possible. Nobody tells you how to do anything, and if you can figure it out, you’re probably smart enough to be approved. So I guess I’m not? Anyway, it’s really frustrating now that I see I really, really need to get busy with these applications. That’s what I get for not knowing anything about applying to colleges? Note to self: the deadline is Monday, October 2! This is really not cool, you guys. The whole rest of my life is at stake due to the things I’ve done (and not done) over the past few weeks. Don’t be like me, kids.

Anyway, it’s that time of year again for BAT testing of the freshmen and sophomores. That means that the rest of us get to do nothing while they test. Well, I can’t say that we’re doing nothing; it’s just that we’re doing nothing educational. In fact, part of this post is being written on a Mac laptop in class. The desktop is littered with saved files, and the computer’s clock is set to Monday, April 19, 1976, but at least it has a working Internet connection, which can’t be said of some of the other laptops here at school.

Also: why would anybody tile a photo for use as their desktop wallpaper? They’d have to be thinking, “I really love this picture, so if I see it on my screen nine times, then I’ll love it nine times more!” Oh well. That’s just a little pet peeve of mine, I guess. It doesn’t harm anybody. Another thing that doesn’t harm anybody is reading lots and lots of Dinosaur Comics. That’s how I spent much of my free time in class.

Yesterday was the first of the two test days, and a lot of juniors and seniors showed up late or didn’t go at all. After all, why should they if they’re going to be doing nothing for half the day? Today there were even fewer people, and some classes were brought to a standstill. Yes, all of the students still have all of their class periods, but most of them are shorter due to the testing. And you might imagine how the teachers have reacted: mixedly. (Is that a word?) Some don’t care if their students skip these rather unimportant days, but others are deeply concerned about losing their teaching time.

But the fun doesn’t end there. Tomorrow is a “professional study day” for the teachers. It’s something they’ve just introduced this year. Every once in a while, the teachers will have to attend workshops during their work hours, so they’ll let the students out early. To compress our schedule, they planned to have 67-minute class periods (instead of 110 minutes), and they were going to let school out at 11:58. I guess there was some criticism about that, so they changed tomorrow’s class periods to 65 minutes, and they’re planning on letting us loose at 11:50 instead. Eight more minutes of weekend!

This is really interesting: Pictures That Lie. It’s a sort of chronicle of notable photographic forgeries, from 19th-century cut-and-paste jobs to, well, 21st-century cut-and-paste jobs.

In Soviet Russia, city abandons YOU!

One year ago: “There are only four more names left on this year’s list of 21 names to be used: Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma.”
Two years ago: “I’ve been told he has quite a sense of humor. He laughs at his own jokes.”