School

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Silence
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School

Post by Silence » Sat Aug 23, 2008 10:47 pm

Gah...this isn't going to be a good year. Fortunately my school is a little less competitive than Ridgewood H.S., so relative to DX, I can get away with less work for the same class rank. :cool:

But it's still not good. Band + school + cross country + homework means a lot less sleep than I'm used to. Seeing as I haven't touched the computer or the newspaper since school started, I don't think I'll be very active on the forums this year.

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Specter
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Re: School

Post by Specter » Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:26 pm

I'm starting my senior yr of HS this year. I usually drop off the face of the forums when school starts, come back for a couple days sometime mid winter, disappear again jan-april, then start posting normal again around may-june when school ends.

And again since its my senior year I will be real busy with college applications and all that jazz and busy doing work and trying to stay at or above a 3.95 gpa. most importantly since i'm one of 3 senior members on the robotics team this year, i'll be doing most of the building etc. of the robot.
My "arsenal": Customizable APH, Storm 600 pistol (still haven't finished fixing this), launcher- Model:AB1.0(Decommissioned), AB1.5, soon AB 1.1(2"rebuild) maybe ill get something else in the future
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SSCBen
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Re: School

Post by SSCBen » Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:51 am

I'm doing okay for next semester for the most part. The good is that I have no books to buy. I bought the only book I didn't have earlier in the summer off eBay for $30 cheaper than the used price at my university. Luckily I could borrow some of Drenchenator's books and others can be used in more than one class. It pays to have your brother go to the same college.

The main problem is my housing... I won't go into the details of how and why but I'm stuck in the worst dorm on campus for a semester (historically, at least). Last year this dorm was so bad they stopped cleaning one floor because some kids were so dirty on it. Someone slipped on puke and broke their arm during that. Another time some drunk idiots through a refrigerator out of the window. From what I've read it's the dorm for kids who are bad at math, which I guess means they drink A LOT. I'm already looking into switching out, but while I'm there I signed up for the math tutoring program hosted there. They pay you $10 an hour to teach kids math. Good for me. :p

I'd have to say in honesty that I thought my senior year in high school was tougher than my freshman year in college. And I definitely learned more in college. Good luck you two. The best advice I can give is to relax because nothing is quite as serious as it perhaps appears as first. That and figure out how much sleep you need at a minimum to function well and get that much.

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Silence
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Re: School

Post by Silence » Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:23 am

Wow, that's some seriously bad behavior. Hopefully you'll get switched out...

I am counting on college to be a little easier, or at least it may seem that way since I'll be focusing on what I care about. Currently all my work goes into subjects that I really don't care about.

I agree sleep is important and I'm trying to make it a priority. I do tend to adjust to lower levels of sleep, but after weekends or breaks I really feel the lack of sleep.

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Specter
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Re: School

Post by Specter » Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:29 am

I think my senior year should go by pretty easy.
I only have 2 full year courses, all the rest are half year. the 2 full year and 2 half-year courses were required (math=Calculus, English 4, and 2 religion courses) my science courses are astronomy and meteorology, history course is Civil War & Reconstruction. The rest are non-working easy peasy courses, like Phys Ed, and intro to art.

My brother took the astronomy and meteorology courses and if i remember correctly he said they weren't that bad.
My "arsenal": Customizable APH, Storm 600 pistol (still haven't finished fixing this), launcher- Model:AB1.0(Decommissioned), AB1.5, soon AB 1.1(2"rebuild) maybe ill get something else in the future
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SSCBen
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Re: School

Post by SSCBen » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:00 am

Silence wrote:Wow, that's some seriously bad behavior. Hopefully you'll get switched out...
I'm stuck there for at least the semester sadly. I'll make the best of it. With luck my RA won't be a deadbeat like my one last year, but if he is, I won't hesitate to take my complaints a level higher. That probably won't look good for my RA so perhaps he'll take me seriously if I have to go that far.

Unlike last year, if I see any activity that's illegal and I don't approve of it (drug use, mainly), I will call the police immediately. There was a guy directly across the hall from me last year who sold a lot of cocaine. I'm not joking either. I'll never forget when I heard his roommate say to him "How many times have I told you not to deal coke on my desk?" to him... it's something that could only be said seriously in this situation. If they take drug reports half as seriously as they take RIAA emails they'll break into the guy's room and arrest him.

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Silence
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Re: School

Post by Silence » Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:57 pm

Wow. Do you know who your roommate is, at least?

My neighbor's roommate is a similar story. On the first night he let his friends into the room at 4 am and they were all high. Hopefully I can get into a good school with a scholarship to avoid things like this.

I seem to be ahead on homework for this week so things are looking up. I've had brutal first quizzes in three classes (it seems to be a common ploy among teachers), which is a little unsettling but I'm not too worried yet. My only concern at the moment is getting my first quarter grades up in time for early admission applications. The last few years I've scraped by with A's in classes by the end of the year, but I can't afford to do that now.

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DX
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Re: School

Post by DX » Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:27 am

Silent Guy, are you a senior in HS this year? Pour your effort into the first quarter if you're aiming at early decision - I worked my ass off to produce a 1st quarter filled with 5 As and 1 B+. It took dedication to pull off, but it looked awesome on my ED to Conn. Obviously once accepted somewhere early, you can drop to mostly Bs for the rest of the year and be fine. 4th quarter I only had 2 As, rest Bs, and no one cared.

College is at times more difficult than high school and at times less difficult. It swings from week to week. You can have a completely lax week and then get slammed the next. The weeks before Thanksgiving Break, Winter Break, and Spring Break are a real pain. Ridgewood teachers once gave me 4 tests on the same day, but when it happens in college, those tests are usually worth like 1/3 of your grade - each one is a bigger deal.

I can imagine Ben's dorm. In freshman year I was in one of the biggest party dorms. At first, you wonder how you're going to survive with your neighbor's bass rattling your door, drunks outside yelling at 4 in the morning, and huge keg parties down the hall. But I got so used to noise that I could no longer fall asleep in perfectly quiet conditions. I'm naturally an easy-going person, so I didn't mind, except when people puked...on walls or stairwells. That was a bit gross. Dorm damage was actually really low - if no one admits to breaking something, the entire house gets charged. The result? Students ratted out friends rather than pay up. Good system.

I didn't have many encounters with druggies. Granted it's New England, but from what I've seen, drinking is far more popular than drugs. Probably has to do with the fact that you can walk down the hall with anything alcoholic and no one cares, but do the same with pot and you're screwed. A little write-up vs a visit to jail.
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SSCBen
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Re: School

Post by SSCBen » Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:25 am

@SilentGuy: The ONLY redeeming thing about this situation is that I'm in a single. But after thinking about it I'd prefer a roommate. People in singles tend to be disconnected from the rest of the floor. I'm sure most people in this dorm are decent but there's a higher concentration of bad apples. And the housing forms give you a decent level of flexibility to the point where I'm sure my roommate would be reasonable.

From what I've heard this dorm is worse than "the party dorm". Apparently puke is so common that you get used to it, and the kids aren't drunk at night or when partying... just drunk all the time. I really can't describe how angry I am to be in it. But I'm going to make the best of it, and if I have to, I'll do some legal but perhaps unethical things in addition. If I see puke and I see who puked it, I'll sweep it under their door. Maybe they'll think twice about it. :p

I actually just got an email yesterday saying "Once you arrive, you will have an opportunity to be a part of a dynamic community of young scholars who, like you, share a love for knowledge." The only thing I'm thinking is that these kids share a love for beer and marijuana, not knowledge.

My dorm last year was basically the polar opposite. While there was some noise problems sometimes, that's the extent of common problems. I didn't even see any alcohol until the second semester. And while the guy across the hall sold a lot of drugs, he wasn't very visible, but I would feel weird when people came to buy drugs because those people are just plain freaky.

I have mid-semester room reassignments on my calendar so I'll see what I can do again. I applied for reassignment over the summer, and even though I had a low priority number (the order in which they serve you in) I didn't get anything changed. I was excited for a few days when they had the room assignment blanked out for my on their website, but they just changed it back, which was anti-climatic.

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Silence
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Re: School

Post by Silence » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:31 pm

Yeah, I'm a senior...sorry I didn't mention that.

I'm really annoyed because I'm off to a bad start in terms of grades in a couple of classes thanks to the first quizzes. But at the moment I'm so much more organized than I was before. It's basically an attitude shift: now I say "I might as well do tomorrow's homework now." Also, I generally take out the easiest assignment left for the week first, which gets it out of my hair and makes me feel better for having done something. I'm even doing homework in parts, which I never used to do, and that lets me do some in school. And finally, band and cross country have squeezed the computer, the newspaper, and TV out of my schedule.

Some days I just do lots of little homework assignments for the week. Other days I catch up with my RSS feeds, visit the forums once (I can't promise posts, but I do read the threads), and do everything else I need to do on the computer. I guess I'm making it sound like I've been in this schedule for months, when it's really only been a few days...but that just goes to show how comfortable I am with the schedule.

So yes, I do plan to work my ass off and I think I can make it happen.

One more thing. This year, in my agenda book, I've finally switched to writing down homework on the day it's due rather than on the day it needs to be done. My opinion: it's far superior. It doesn't bind you to doing homework the day before, because you have to look ahead anyway to see what's due. I always thought it'd be confusing because homework for the day before and events on the day of are in the same place. I avoid that confusion by using two styles of completion check boxes: a back arrow for homework that's due and a circle for events on that day.

I do need to get organized for college applications. I need to round up all the application forms, recommendation letters, and essays soon, and I can't wait for the guidance counselors to address these since the best teachers get booked quickly and early admission is, well, early. I'm giving myself two weeks to get this done.

My only disappointment time-wise is that I won't be able to do any projects on my own at this rate. Programming? Yeah, right...even if I find the time, the computer might become a distraction again. Nerf/water guns? No time for that either. Colleges might not care since I'm getting good grades and recommendations instead...and fun-wise, I don't really care because I'm quite satisfied at the moment. So it's just a change of plans, I guess.

DX, I'm surprised there are party problems even in Connecticut College. I thought it'd be better since it's such a small school...but I guess not. And Ben, I hope they consider your appeal for a better dorm. The "just ignore it" attitude might work, but if the dorm activity is really distracting, I doubt it.
Ben wrote:People in singles tend to be disconnected from the rest of the floor.
I guess it takes some experience to notice that. Thanks for mentioning it...I've never heard that advice anywhere else. I'm still not sure whether I'd prefer a single/quad or a double. But there are too many differences between individual universities and the dorms at some universities, so I can't really make a decision yet.

Thanks for all the advice. I guess this thread's just a bit of an outlet for all of us.

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Hunt_and_Annoy
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Re: School

Post by Hunt_and_Annoy » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:18 pm

Wow Ben...That sounds painful.
On a side note, does anyone else think it's a little ridiculous to have 2 hours of homework from a single class the first day of high school junior year?

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SSCBen
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Re: School

Post by SSCBen » Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:23 pm

If I'm going to be stuck there for the entire semester I'm going to make it more painful for those who feel like annoying me than it will be for me. There are many things I could do but most people just don't do them.

I've already reviewed the housing rules and the proper procedure so I'm basically going to do this if there's a problem:

1) Ask the person to stop, citing the rule.
If they don't stop I go to 2).

2) Find the RA of that floor and talk to them.
If the RA isn't there go to 3).

3) Go to the first floor and complain to the person sitting in the front desk.
If they do nothing go to 4).

4) Go knock on the resident director's door.
If they do nothing go to 5).

5) Send a formal complaint to the head of the residence halls.
If they do nothing go to step 6).

6) Send a formal complaint to the president of the university.
If they do nothing, complain more and louder.

For anything blatantly illegal (drugs, etc) I'm going to call the police non-emergency number in addition to all of the above.

I don't mean to abuse the rules or push them too hard, but I really really don't want to deal with the kind of stuff that happens in this dorm historically.

I figure the worst that could happen would be that someone gets angry at me for turning them in, but what are they going to do? Beat me up? If so, mission accomplished because they're never coming back. Hopefully I'll survive though. :p
Hunt_and_Annoy wrote:On a side note, does anyone else think it's a little ridiculous to have 2 hours of homework from a single class the first day of high school junior year?
Yes, that is ridiculous, though not too uncommon in college.

The main differences for college work is that you usually spend less time in the classroom, the homework isn't always necessary (for math classes I usually do only 75% of the recommended problems), and the homework seems more relevant when it's in your major. In high school I hated a lot of what I had to do but at college I've found I'm much more tolerant of lengthy homeworks, mainly because they're more relevant to me and more interesting.

With that being said I really hate writing long papers. Most of the time they're unnecessary. I'm confident the professors and TAs don't like reading them and I don't like writing them. :p

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DX
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Re: School

Post by DX » Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:40 pm

Originally Posted by Ben
People in singles tend to be disconnected from the rest of the floor.
Eh, I'd say it has more to do with the person in the single as opposed to all singles. I've known plenty of double roommates, even some in triples or quads that are never seen - they simply don't come out of their rooms very often. If you're at least reasonably outgoing, you'll get to know your floor and house regardless of what kind of room you're in. Oh and my entire floor is single rooms only...we're already a pretty tight knit group...so take that :p
I'm still not sure whether I'd prefer a single/quad or a double. But there are too many differences between individual universities and the dorms at some universities, so I can't really make a decision yet.
Yep, it varies widely from school to school. Generally frosh don't get singles, so plan on a double, triple, or quad. If you have a choice [and at some places it's randomly assigned the first year] choose based on what you want out of your room and roommate experience. Do you want more personal space and less room parties? Go with a double. Do you want to meet a lot of people and don't mind room parties? Go with a quad. Go with a triple if you want a mix. Then again, I had a room party in a single last night, so it really depends on the type of people. Doubles tend to be cleaner and more organized simply because there's less people and less stuff.
DX, I'm surprised there are party problems even in Connecticut College. I thought it'd be better since it's such a small school...but I guess not.
New England colleges tend to be party schools. However, nights out aren't always out of control like you see in movies...depends on the group you hang out with. My group is pretty reasonable, we drink and we have a good time, but nothing excessive - no puking, brawls, or any other weird stuff. Never been written up either, only the loud, really hammered idiots get caught. There's also dorms that are sub-free and a few floors in certain dorms that are sub-free, something for everyone. I won't do drugs though, if someone offers I just turn it down. Peer pressure only exists if you let it exist, kinda like intimidation in a water war. It's all just energy.

So I'd recommend having a good night at least once a week, doesn't have to involve alcohol at all, but if it does, know your limit and use simple common sense.
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Silence
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Re: School

Post by Silence » Sat Aug 30, 2008 11:24 pm

Hunter, two hours is a lot of homework, but I had that the first week too. Last week was much easier for me since I did some homework ahead of time and in school. It all depends on your classes I guess.

Ben, I don't think anybody would beat you up for turning them in, unless they're really drunk or on narcotics. I'd turn them in if their habits are getting in your way.

DX, I'm not sure what you mean by "sub-free".

Regarding alcohol: I've heard lots of reasons why not to drink, but no reason why you should drink. I'm confident I don't need to have alcohol to enjoy a party, and as you say, peer pressure is irrelevant.

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cantab
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Re: School

Post by cantab » Mon Sep 01, 2008 12:05 am

Seems like the US is a whole another world...
In the UK...well, at least at my college, almost all the rooms are singles. There are a few 'sets', which are basically two bedrooms and a lounge; they're well cool but you need luck in the ballot to get one.
Also, drinking age here is 18, which leads to a different attitude to it. Almost everyone gets pissed at least sometimes, and the college certainly facilitate if not actually encourage it, but there's not usually too much trouble apart from puking.
And sorting out classes is a lot easier. Once you've chosen your degree you pretty much get told what to attend; at most it'll maybe be a choose 3 options from 5 sort of thing.

Personally I wish my college would tell me something about my next year's accomodation already! I'm still waiting to hear where I'll be living, but I've a good general idea.
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