School: Ridiculous Expectations

[hgibjlkvgiuabgvtigb]

I think it depends on your program. Not all of my teachers preached their class as THE class, except for one. But that's because Typography really IS the most essential skill to designers. Fail that and you ought to rethink your career :s

[Mr Lapus]

The_Martyr

A few statistics:
- Suicide is the third leading cause of death for those aged 15-24 and the second leading cause of death of college students.
- Students reported during the last school year feeling the following:
Over 60% of the students reported feeling things were hopeless one or more times.
Almost 40% of the men and 50% of the women reported feeling so depressed that they had difficulty functioning one or more times.
10% of the students reported seriously considering attempting suicide at least one time.
(cited from healthyminds.org)

This doesn't strike me as being particularly different from the normal population.

I'd want to know more about the leading cause of death thing, but moving from third to second place isn't that great a leap. What swapped positions with it?

[MingLeChat]

Lil Can of Alzheimers

No, Western kids are just spoilt and lazy.

k, can I have some of that Alzheimers?

[Unholy Mother]

College was a bit easier for me because I had control of how many classes I took, but a lot of kids don't have that option if their parents are paying for it, mine are just chill.

Highschool however was ******** absurd. I had teachers who would say, "it's only about 2 hours of work a night for this class, you won't get anywhere in life if you can't even work hard for 2 hours." Ya right. Because you are the only class I have right? No, EVERY teacher was giving several hours of work.

For about 5-6 months straight during junior year I was working from the moment I got home until well past my bed time to finish my work. I hardly had time to work on the half a dozen major projects I also had running at the same time. It got to the point where I was only getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night and doing more work during lunch and even the 10 minutes between classes. Eventually I had to start figuring out how many points everything was worth so I could decide which assignments I could safely abandon without denting my grades.

Essentially it was an endless hell.

I also found out that year that several neurological disorders seem to run in my family. Chiefly, the stress I was under made the OCD I already knew I had way way worse, sometimes to the point that I would have a panic attack just getting dressed in the morning, and is what my doc thinks triggered my bipolar disorder. Not to mention ALL teenagers around that period of time were going through significant hormonal changes which for many caused shorter tempers among other things.

I honestly to this day have no ******** clue what in god's name that school was thinking. ******** retards.

[deadguy]

That's not harsh expectations, it's harsh teachers. Every teacher thinks their class is the end all class, the most important one you'll ever take. Volleyball? Best sport ever apparently. Aerobics? My teacher goes on and on about how much it'll help up 20 years from now. Logic? The only class that teaches you anything worthwhile, if you believe her. Oceanography? Actually ok, and recognizes that most of us take it because it's required to take an earth science. She's my favorite teacher.

[Dhyn Apza]

There is an imbalance of expectations and preparation for the nation's children. They are told that the only way they can succeed in life is to go to college, so many of them do not realize the other opportunities available to them such as moving up in the workforce, trades, and being self-made. While a good majority of students (I think at least 60% is completely fair) should go to college, there is still a good amount who are needed elsewhere and skilled in those areas and many of those kids do not even realize it. This really hurts us.

The other side is the lack of preparation. On both ends K-12 fail the kids. It's catered towards pushing kids to college and not on being truly useful after graduating if you were not to be going to college when a good percentage of our workforce has nothing to do with higher education. That said, the preparation we are given is not solid. Many teachers at the college level are frustrated by the "advanced" classes when schools don't solidify the basics. Calculus is fine and dandy only if you have a great grasp of Algebra, which many students do not.

Of course, many schools are exceptions and they need to be examined and applauded.

Once you get to college those high expectations and failure to prepare really affects students who no longer feel like that is there place. There is a difference between difficulty and not being prepared. These students don't even, at times, feel like they can overcome the difficulties because they are already so far behind and too much is expected of them by grades, commitment, and material which they had no adequately been schooled in.

[LilPinkCandy]

I've had hard classes and I've had really tough classes. Generally if I'm taking math then I wait on science or something else that is really really hard for me. Its about balance. If you do not balance what you are good at/bad at then you will fail. I make sure that when I take my classes I take things that I can devote my time to.