I'm not tired, I'm perfectly awake. My Chemistry test proved to be more challenging than I thought, given my inability to do less than half of the problems. I cannot think, I cannot get my mind focused on Chemistry today, and likely the same thing will occur when I take my AP world history test, I won't be able to focus. Normally I take adderal to stimulate my brain a little, help me clue in and focus on a subject. It used to work, but now it feels like it doesn't, like I'm simply daydreaming against my will again. School has overworked me to the point of hating it, I keep having to remind myself that I don't hate the subjects, I hate the classes. More than that, being overworked has led me to be lazy, even when it's a subject I love. The amount of work is counterproductive, and only makes me not want to learn.
This is what's bad about the American school system: they structure it in such a way that once one gets to high school, they hate it, and thus don't want to learn. I know for a fact that this is happening to me, and my natural curiosity (and good parenting) is the only thing that keep me interested. I think science is cool, and thus I pay attention, I think math is a puzzle, and thus my competitive nature kicks in and forces me to do it. I think english is fun and creative, especially writing, and I can be creative and philosophical. I think history is interesting, and want to learn more about it.
These subjects, all on their own, are absorbing, fun, and I can focus easily, the classes, however, are hell. They could care less about if you learn it and more so if you memorize it for the test. You could memorize all these dates for a history test, take it, then walk out and forget about them for the rest of your life, as they won't help you in 99% of the careers the average person goes into. The classes are pointless, and I'd learn a whole lot more if I were simply given a textbook, told to read it, and learn about history. All I learn from AP world history and english is how to bullshit things, and given most of the assignments are bullshit anyways, it's not too hard to accomplish. They don't allow us to learn at our own pace, forcing us to learn everything in one year, and proving we've learned it by assigning tons of homework about the subject, serving more to actually stress us out rather than make us learn stuff, which only complicates things in the long run.
If you apply more and more stress to someone, they learn and retain less, and that stress also reflects in their personality, as it has with me and my frustration and my giving of less fucks than usual. School can be fun, you can have lots of friends there, but depending on your school, can be a complete waste of time.
In my Latin class, we go slowly and patiently, gradually translating stuff, yet still going at a fast enough pace. We occasionally get off on tangents sometimes, but we always get back on track. Latin is a class I enjoy, as we're given freedom, and it's not too restrictive. The weirdest part is the school hasn't picked up on the idea of freedom. You could simply compare the happiness levels of the language students in each of their classes, and you'd find that the latin students are happier and more open to learning than the other language students, for the most part (may I mention that Latin just has translation homeworks, 2 tests per six weeks, and the occasional quiz. That's it). Even to me, the other language courses seem much more stressful as there are projects everywhere, while we never get any projects of the sort, just straight up material.
The American school system, for the most part, is counterproductive in the long run, and one doesn't have to be an average person in order to be affected by it. I want to change this shit, because as I've said, it's bullshit.
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