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Well, has she taken all AP classes before, and been able to handle it? If so, then okay. But if not, it might be like that "your eyes are bigger than your stomach" thing. She might THINK she can handle them, but when she gets there, she might not be able to. You can't just measure success in tough classes on intelligence. You need mental stability, determination, drive, and passion. Intelligence is a good thing to have, but it's not the only thing you need to have. That's something I should've thought about before taking AP World when I'm not going into a history major. We have two high schools in our district too, but all of our AP classes are offered at both, as far as I know. I realize that going to another school to take a class can be a real pain, but if you have the passion for that class, you'll look past that. I mean, yeah, you don't get as much time once you get there, but to me, some time is better than no time. Well, I know that my school is thinking of adding an eighth hour because kids have been complaining about not being able to fit everything in because of all the required classes we have to take. This is just my opinion, but I don't think they'll change it after everyone put their classes in. That'll be really stressful and frustrating for them as well as the students. My guess is, if they're going to change it at all, they'll do it before everyone signs up for classes so the students have time to understand the new scheduling and put there classes in so that they'll work in the new schedule, instead of having the kids put in classes that work with the old schedule, then springing this change on them right before school starts.

Well, a lot of our AP classes last two periods. It's just like your 90 minute classes. If an AP class lasts 2 periods, each one being 50 minutes, you'll just add 10 minutes to your block period. That doesn't seem like much of a change to me. Well, why were they offered because of block? What's really so special about it that they couldn't have those classes if they got rid of block? I don't know many schools that offer meterology as an elective, and I'm sure local colleges will be aware that, if it changes, that you weren't able to take it. You can take a more in-depth class in college. Yeah, it'll cost more, but you're also getting a better knowledge and understanding of the subject than you ever would in high school. Like my step-dad says, high school electives are only introductions to the big classes you'll take in college. They're only enough to get your feet wet to see if you really wanna take this into your future or not. I know, without that, you could be stuck at college, working toward a degree that you thought you'd like, but didn't once you got there. But, you really should know what you wanna do by the time you graduate high school. That's why my mom keeps telling me I should stop changing my mind and focus on one thing, which I think I found. And there are classes that have the basic subjects of the career you want. For example, you wanna go into meterology. That's based in science. I don't know about you, but every year, my science class had a meterology unit, up until high school when we had specific sciences we were learning. If you like science, and if you had a unit on what you wanna major in and liked it, I'm sure you'll be fine without a whole class on it. But, who knows really? Your school may not even change at all.

Well, okay, I can't say I don't understand that part. I know if we changed to block, I'd have a hard time adjusting as well.

That's exactly why I don't do many extra curriculars. Actually, I'm not in any right now. I hate when my counselor tells me that colleges want people to be well-rounded. Well, if they make us take all these AP and Honors classes just to be CONSIDERED for a student at the college, where do you think we'll be able to find TIME to be well-rounded with extra activities?!

Hmm. Well, it is summer, and the air is always hot and humid, which means unstable. So a storm could pop up at any time, really. There's one going on right now where I am, actually. And it only rained a little this morning, then stopped and was clear until now. But, I'm glad you at least had fun in the rain. And yeah, it always sucks being sick. My teachers never take "I have a cold" as an excuse anymore. They expect you to be in school as long as you don't have a fever. Maybe this is how swine flu and other viruses spread.

So, you read for school during summer? I've never read The Crucible, but I love the idea of the Salem Witch Trials. Or well, it's not really any idea, it actually did happen, but when people put that into books, it just makes it all the more interesting. Have you ever read Witch & Wizard by James Patterson? Yeah, it's like a modern version of the Salem Witch Trials, it's pretty good.

Well, I think my friend can handle all AP/honors classes. But since we're only going to be juniors, this is the first time that we've really been able to choose more classes. Because freshman and sophomore year are spent getting most of our required classes out of the way, and usually the only AP class you can take as a sophomore is one of the two AP History classes. Once junior year rolls around, then the AP math, english, and science classes are open to you to take.

The board is supposed to make the final decision in September so then we'll pretty much the whole school year to talk to our counselors and figure out how to make our schedule work for the next year.

There are various reasons that some classes are only offered at one of the high schools. For all of the Engineering courses, the software that we use is extremely expensive and we can only afford to have it at one school. That's the class that I took at the other high school this past year. I thought I would like it, but turns out that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I mean, it was fun, especially when we got to model things on the computer, but I guess engineering just isn't my thing. Our AP Chemistry and Biology classes are sometimes offered only at one high school for the year. The reason being is that sometimes the high schools don't get enough students to sign up for it to run at both high schools so they combine the students and offer it at one. So for example, we need 15 students to sign up for AP Bio in order for it to run that year. So 9 students from my school sign up for it, and 6 students from the other high school sign up for it there. Well, there isn't enough students at either school for it to run, so instead of not having it, they take the students from the other high school and bus them to ours for AP Bio, and vice versa if the other high school had more kids signed up for it than at my school. It's the same for when you get to the upper language classes, like Spanish and French 4/5, and a couple others, because they're ones that won't have enough students at both schools seperately, but combine them, and the class can run.

As for the classes that were added because of block, I have no idea how that works, or why they could only be added because of block. By the time my brother got to high school, they had been on block for awhile, and I don't really know. I don't know why, I just know they were.

The only time I've ever had a meteorology unit in school was in eighth grade, and half of it was spent watching a movie, and the rest was on clouds pretty much. So I haven't had an actual weather unit in school per se, and that was eighth grade-that was 3, 4 years ago. I mean, I'm still interested in it, but I don't know much about it. I really like Earth Science and Astronomy too. So one of those three should be my major, and then of course, a minor in history. I'm really hoping that I can take astronomy and meteorology my senior year, but if I can't then I'll drop Honors Physics this year and try to fit them in, because Honors Physics will always be offered no matter what they do.

I totally hear you. I love doing all my extra curriculars, I mean, I couldn't imagine not doing tennis or scholastic bowl or drama or marching band. But then those take up so much of your time and then you're up til midnight or later doing homework. At least the only ones that really conflict are tennis and marching band. And those only last 2 months at the most thankfully. But I totally get what you're saying.

We got slammed with a bunch of rain on Friday night. We hadn't had a decent rain in a while, then all of a sudden Friday night we get pounded with rain. My brother said that we had almost 1/2 inch of water in our basement on Saturday morning because we lost power and our sump pumps couldn't run. I wasn't acutally home because my mom and I went to my grandma's for the weekend. Up by her, there was flooding all over. In fact, driving home today, part of the road was closed because water had flooded part of it.

I hate that. There have been days when I have the worst cold in the world, but my mom makes me go to school because I'm not puking and I don't have a fever. So then I spend the rest of the day absolutely miserable and I get the rest of my friends sick too.

Unfortunately, yes. At my school if you're in the Honors or Accelerated Honors English classes, you always have summer reading. I'm in the Acc Hon. Eng. 3 this year, so that's focused on American Literature. So we have to read The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, and Catcher in the Rye. I've never read that book. Really the only thing I've ever read by James Patterson is The Maximum Ride series, but my mom reads a lot of what he rights. That sounds interesting; I'll have to check it out.

Meatball: What's The Maze Runner about? It's sounds really good. I love 1984. In English this past year, we got a list of books to choose from, and I chose 1984. I loved it. I loved how it didn't have that perfect ending; how in the end, nothing changed.

Goodness, what novels you post. Not a bad thing, of course (:

Meatballhead: I've never read the Maze Runner, but I think I have it...and The Hunger Games series is amazing! I can't wait for the third book. The Giver and the Ender's Game series are classics (:

Jedi: You'll definitely have fun this year with American Literature. You should check your reading list to see if you get to read Big Money by Dos Passos or Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut, those were some of my favorites when I took an American Lit class.

Kineka: The Giver is about a dystopian society where everyone is assigned their role in life (they are each assigned a mate, two kids, their job...), but nobody questions it because they're content with everything. In the society there is one person who keeps memories of what society was like before, and he/she is who is consulted whenever there is a question or problem. In the dystopian society they see in black and white and can't hear music/singing (I assume, it was a little vague on this). The protagonist is a boy who, when he is assigned his job, becomes the "Receiver of Memories"--basically he is supposed to be the next person to keep all those before-dystopia memories.
I really liked this book because it was a definite "think outside of the box" sort of story, and questioned what the balance of freedom and contentedness should be.
Have you read Lowry's other book, Gathering Blue?

Ender's Game is one of my favorite books (: There's actually a whole series of them, which I was really excited to find. It is set in the future, when humans all belong to...one government? Two? Ender, the protagonist, is taken into space to attend "Battle School" because the government finds him very talented. At Battle School he meets other talented kids like him (by "kid" I mean 10 years old.) and the book rolls through a bunch of fun strategies and battles. It turns out that all those kids are being trained for war against an alien species, the "buggers", a hive-like species which were compared to bees/ants and Ender has to go battle them.
My summary definitely doesn't do the book justice, but it was certainly a worthwhile read. The book is a mixture of questioning higher powers and wanting to be patriotic, set in a high-tech future.

I've never read 1984, but now I really want to (:

Lol yeah, I don't think I've been online since winter break.

Definitely, if you have some time you should read them. I always feel silly when I read books that the library puts in the kids' section, but they're good hahah.
Gathering Blue is about a crippled girl who lives in a village where people who are injured/dying are sent to the fields to be taken by "monsters" (that have never been seen; the bodies, living or dead when left, just disappear). The council which controls the village is quite corrupt and when the crippled girl's guardian dies (her father was field-ed after being injured and her mother died before the story) they want to send her out to the field, too. Lucky for her, she's got lots of talent with sewing/embroidery and the story-robe of the council's history needs repair! She gets to stick around until she finishes it...and during that time, she finds out about the real story behind the field and her father's injury and discovers a kinder world. Also the title "Gathering Blue" is because the girl can't figure out how to make blue dye and nobody else knows either, but she needs blue thread for the robe-thing. Sounds silly the way I put it, but it makes sense in context.
Seems quite sappy but the story was good. I liked The Giver better but maybe only because I'm a sci-fi sort of person?

Hmm, I've never read any of those, though I've seen the movies to all three...movies never do books justice :l Oh, and I tend not to like "classics" either (they're always dreary things like All Quiet on the Western Front and Grapes of Wrath and As I Lay Dying which English teacher have parties with).

Ouch, but at least it wasn't for something life threatening? Were you able to watch? (Sorry, gruesome question.) Hopefully you won't have any more surgeries .__.

Turayza: Welcome back. Glad that you're back. It's been really quiet around the common room since there's only like, three people who post frequently.

I know this year for English we're definitely reading Huckleberry Finn, and probably To Kill A Mockingbird (my friend took this class last year, but I can't remember all the books he told me that they read). We read The Giver in 7th grade, and I thought it was alright. I mean, it wasn't the greatest, but it also wasn't horrible like some of the other books we've read in school. Ender's Game sounds really interesting...right up my alley for books I like to read. 1984 is really good. It was written in 1949, and it's basically what George Orwell thought the world would be like in 1984. Granted, it's a little bit extreme, but it's interesting.

Kineka: I don't think we'll learn about weather in Earth Science. It's more about the study of the earth and how it came to be like it is today. And studying things like volcanoes and plate tectonics. If you've ever seen the show How the Earth Was Made, it's a lot of that kind of stuff.

Scholastic Bowl is sort of like Jeopardy. You're on a team of usually 5, and you're playing against a team of 5, and the coaches have a list of questions that they ask. The most popular category of questions is literature, math, and history. Then whichever team gets the the question (it's called a toss-up because anyone can answer it), then that team gets a bonus questions. Usually a series of 4-5 questions, and they get 30 seconds to come up with the right answers, and whatever bonus questions the team doesn't answer, the other team can try and answer them. So it's really just a lot of random trivia really. It's pretty fun.

My grandma only lives about 30 minutes from the Wisconsin border. So she's pretty close.

Yuck...an ingrown toenail. That just sounds nasty. Well, the only surgery I've ever had is getting my wisdom teeth out a couple months ago...that was fun (not really). I have one super beyond tiny cavity that took the dentist literally 5 minutes to fill. And I broke my shoulder when I was little, but that didn't need surgery. I've never sprained anything though. I'm quite surprised by that between dance, tennis, and all the other sports I play on the side, I'm surprised that I've never been seriously injured.

On a random side note, I went to the mall yesterday with a couple of my friends, because one of the them is visiting from Spain, and she leaves on Thursday so this was our last chance to hang out and we decided to meet up at the mall. Anyway, we went Delia's, and they had a graphic t-shirt that says "Be Nerdy" using elements from the Periodic Table. So I bought that and a pair of socks with British flags and music notes on them. It's pretty awesome.

Another random side note...I went camping in the great outdoors last night with my friend, her two younger sisters, and two of her sister's friends. Well, it wasn't really the great outdoors...we were only like, 15 feet away from her house. But it was still fun.

The author of Percy Jackson... started a new series, but I haven't read any of the books yet. I did find the writing a little bit on the simple side--it's definitely late-elementary, early-middle-school level, but interesting nonetheless.

I liked To Kill A Mockingbird but I didn't really understand it because I was a 5th grader when I read it D: I should probably look at it again. And I don't know, I found The Grapes of Wrath terribly dull. It's about the Dust Bowl, and usually I like historical fiction, but I was frustrated reading it. It's usually somewhere in american lit classes, though.

Camping in the backyard is the best biggrin If you "forget" something or want to take a shower or feel like drinking something cold you just go inside, lol. Though going to, say, national parks is amazing too, because it's so pretty and untouched.

Yeah, The Red Pyramid. I should read it too, then (:
And definitely, Grapes of Wrath is 100% historical fiction and a rather boring one at that. :l American Lit isn't too bad if you get a good teacher, but all the really famous books and authors (Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Twain, Morrison...etc.) are, in my opinion, way overrated and all very similar and boring. Maybe I just don't appreciate them enough hahah.

Yeah, my grandma doesn't live to far from Milwaukee because my aunt lives really close to her and her daughter (my cousin) goes to Marquette and so yeah.

Ewww....that sounds really gross and nasty.

Delia's is a clothing store and they have the most awesome graphic tees ever. Haha...I'm a nerd, but my parents don't make fun of me for it...my best friend's parents do. I'm like, always over at her house, and we actually bought the same shirt and socks at Delia's on Monday, and when she showed her mom, her mom couldn't believe that we both bought the same shirt and socks. We have a periodic table placemat too. That's where I first learned the elements. When I was really bored, I would walk out into the kitchen and look at it and try and figure out what all the different numbers meant.

Camping right by a house is great. Because we could go inside and use the bathroom and get more food and drinks (there were like, 6 of us, so food and drinks went fast). But it was really funny, because everyone was taking bets on how long we would last in the tent, and no one said that we would last all night, so we all decided to prove them wrong and stay in the tent all night, which we did.

I love The Red Pyramid. It's actually part of a new series called the Kane Chronicles. It was really good. It's still about mythology, only this time it's Egyptian mythology, which I find to be much more fascinating than Greek mythology, at least in the context of that book.

Honestly, I hate classic literature. I mean, some of it is good, but most of it-Dracula, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes-just don't appeal to me. Probably because they were written so long ago, and since they were written so long ago, to me, that usually means they'll be boring and hard to get into. I still respect the authors for writing a piece of literature that people still read today, I just won't be one of those people who reads it.