General Goings On

Here is a place to talk about the general goings on in your life. Rant, vent, celebrate, exuberate, or just ramble on.

My name is Suzanne. I'm an individual gifted with great intelligence, or so the tests say. I am facing a dilemma. My problem is that, although I attend a private school, the schooling is no more difficult than that of public school, only instead of learning on a seventh grade level, I learn things that the average freshman would learn. Why is this bad, you ask? Because as you grow, your ability to take in more knowledge increases only marginally. So, although I am learning high school concepts, I am still learning at the same pace, so I'm still bored when it takes 3 days for all the various skill levels in my class to get the concept, because my school takes anywhere from IQs of 130 onwards, so there's a lot of diversity. My IQ was tested at 140, but I'm not convinced IQ scores are accurate. I have friends in higher math classes still struggling with linear equations while I'm doing trig in my spare time. (Literally, one day I was bored and so I asked my dad to teach me trig, and I was solving problems in 15 minutes) Now school isn't so much a daily routine as a depressing, painful, inescapable, 8 hour chunk of my life wasted every day. I don't think I have learned 1 new thing this year yet, we're still reviewing last year, or at least, I know all the material, so it can't be new. The worst part is an incredibly dim witted system for kids like me who tend to leave things at home/school a lot. The system seems like a good idea at first glance, it requires the student to get every assignment signed by the teacher who assigned it, and then a parent when the work is done. Why is it so dim witted you ask? First, it makes you into a social outcast. Teachers call students in this system up to the front of the room to have a little slip on a clipboard signed, and so everyone knows you as the disorganized fool who never does anything right. I have almost no friends now, and ones that used to be my friends now pester me and ask "Why are you always in trouble?" and "I never see you at lunch! You always forget your homework!" because if a student forgets his/her homework, the student is taken out of lunch to do the assignment and is not aloud to talk, read anything but what is assigned, or do anything entertaining. One of the stupider things about the system is that when you forget to get something signed, forget the sheet at home, or have the sheet fall off the clipboard (I HATE clipboards, everything always falls off!) you get taken out of lunch again. It angers me so much to read news paper articles and reviews about my school, glowing praise wrought with false information and complete deception. I once saw something where a kid said "Look mom, same book, different cover!" in public school, as if it were different in my school. My school follows a fixed curriculum too, they don't just magically have their own new textbooks meant for gifted kids, they just use textbooks for kids a year or two older.

Sorry, just had to say that.

I go to one of the best public school systems in the nation. I feel your pain, though. It seems that all we are doing is review. Simple stuff like Absolute Values, Linear Equations, the Pythagorean Therom, even back to functions, which I learned in the Second Grade! My dad usually teaches me stuff before the school even hints at it. I understand wall street very well, and two years ago I told my parents it might be a good idea to invest in Apple. I was right, and Apple's shares are now at around $200. I am also a disorganized person, it runs from both of my parents. (Ouch is right!)

Well I certainly know how you feel with the whole leaving one's work at home or not liking the system, though personally, I don't mind getting something before the rest of the class understands it, having chances to help someone else with the concepts being taught is a good way to make friends.

If you feel that school is a bore because its not challenging enough, you could try psychoanalyzing social situation (it's what I do when I get extremely bored), one can learn a lot by observing how people will react in a given situation, and pondering what causes people to act certain ways.

Also, I recall recommending Google back when it was at ~$300, unfortunately that suggestion was never taken, now it's at $500+ and expected to break $700... eventually.

Errr, I'm not a big fan of talking about my school, because all I usually say is "Gosh, this place sucks," and "I HATE school," and "I can't wait until I leave to another school next year." So I'm going to talk about something else. Friendship issues.

It seems as if I can't make friends, at all. While in reality, All of the people I'm close to end up moving away. Literally. There was Michaela, who was with me for 4 years until she left to Georgia, now she's in Illinois (we are still besties though). There's Madeline, who moved from our neighborhood to another one in another city, which means I can only see her every month or two. Drew moved a few streets away, but I never see her on the weekends or over breaks, we only see her after school when she comes to our house after school to wait for her parents to pick her up. Cheyenne is about to move, somewhere that I forgot. In kindergarten, my friend Olivia moved to like, Spain or Canada or Denmark or SOMETHING like that. My former friend Abby left for New Zealand for about a year, then came back and didn't want to have anything to do with me. What is the DEAL? All I can say is, not a lot of people live near me that I like, so my days are usually long and lonely.


I feel trapped, lonely,
Locked in my own unseen world,
and I can't get out.
Told you I write haiku!