Frustration

(this book is much more exciting than you'd think, actually)

I need to go on a mini-rant here. Sorry, but AcDec stress has made everything I already find irritating even more frustrating.

I don't know how it is at other schools, but my high school seems to have huge amounts of students who take AP classes. Some of them are the kind of high school kids who don't put a whole lot of effort into things; they skip or stay home "sick" from school, rarely do homework, don't show up to class the day a project/paper is due, talk/text during class, and make fun of the people who are actually interested in learning.

My AP English 12 class is overflowing with people like this, literally; we're currently short four desks. Out of the 35 or so in the class, between 10 and 20 are actually interested. (This varies depending on if I'm counting overachieving, over-involved students who do well in the class, but seem to only have extrinsic motivation. It's not the same thing as being lazy, but they usually seem to repeat what the teacher says rather than contribute to discussions, which is another one of my pet peeves.) I'm almost dreading the class at this point. I would love to have the luxury of discussing poetry, literature, and short stories with a small group of like-minded students, but I instead have to sit through a dumbed-down version of the class. Nobody wins; the people who enjoy English are bored because the information is being spoon-fed to us, and the people who don't care are stuck in the class either way.

I would love to go on (about my English class in particular, there is so much I could say about it), but I don't want to bore you. I really have to wonder, though: why take an AP class if you're not interested in the subject? Is it because it "looks good" on a college application? (In Wisconsin, UW-Madison is the hardest school to get accepted to, and also a notorious "party school." Ironic.) I just can't fathom it. Maybe this sounds pretentious, but I feel people like this are hindering my education. Is it really that ridiculous for me to wish people who don't care about school very much wouldn't take AP classes? Everyone would be better off.