Thursdays Olpc

Thursday night I did get around to working on the wiki, though it was not much. Basically I added some more pages to the RSS reader section. Also, the more I write, the more I develop a nice little map of how all the pages will(hopefully) connect to each other. Sort of like a little road map, relating pages to others with similar/necessary content in order make the most of what one just read. I figure that making sure that, at the very least, I create the outline of connective as I write will benefit in the long run - I won't have go back and shift things around as much if I already have the foundation laid out. However, now that I think about it, this really just seems like a logical progression of things that I should have realized would be essential since the beginning. Yet, since this is my first wiki, I suppose its better for me to get it now before it became harder to weave later. Anyways this week should see some heavy work being done so look forward to some more posts here later.

Why I'm happy that I took an SAT class

At must say that at first, I thought that I could study for the SAT on my own and still come out of it with a good grade. Though, now that this course is coming to an end, I have to say that I was wrong. I just finished checking my scores and from the first week to now my score went from a 1410 to a 1650. While this is still a bit lower than where I want it, I think that I can take care of the studying from here on out.

The course itself is about 6 or so weeks long and the last class is the Tuesday after next, though my final exam is tomorrow. Before I signed up I heard a lot from different people on whether or not there was any value in taking a class in preparation for the test. Many of those who were against it were against the SAT in general and felt that it was not all that of an important factor I should overly worry about. But my logic was that getting as high on the SAT as I can would help me out out in the long run and as much time that has been taken out of my days, I believe it will all soon come back to reward me in the end (and if by any chance it does not, I'd rather know the results of my made attempt, rather than feel like I should have done something when I could have).

So to end this post I would like to pass on this word of advice to those trying to decide if a class would be good for them: Do what feels right. If a course of some kind will help make you feel more comfortable with the SATs then by all means go ahead and look into one(link goes to the one I took). But if you think its a waste, then don't bother. You would only get as much out of it as you put in.

Lack of OLPC updates

There has been no new updates on my part for the OLPC wiki. This new term keeps pilling me down with work and I can't bring my head out of it long enough to post something (and yet I still find time to blog...funny huh?). On Thursday I have internship so I'm hoping to use the night before for the wiki. I'm aiming for a couple of hours of nice uninterrupted work should do wonders for making sure I'm back on track with things. Also the upcoming week off from school I'm planning to do some work to make sure I'm on top of some other things as well. I've noticed that one of my problems (or quite possibly the main problem) is time managing. I don't do good work unless I feel a certain way and I can't seem to force myself back into that anymore. I've been feeling very lazy all of a sudden and this is not the time for it! I want to see if applying any of these time managing techniques I've found will help to make me more productive. If I do get around to it, I'll put some of my findings here later.

In other news, on Friday I got my report card... And it was not all that bad. Only two Bs while everything else were As. I must say that I'm fairly happy with them and they give me something to aim to beat in order to end my junior year well. Well I was quite pleased with what I got, there were a few of my friends and acquaintances who went ballistic. I really did not see the point their behavior but alas, I bit my tongue and just watched. And just earlier today I found out about some English honors club my school is thinking about getting into so thats something I definitely I'm aiming to check out tomorrow.

The Monkeysphere

I've just finished reading an article a friend gave me today, which you can find here. Its about an interesting concept of the Monkeysphere. The Monkeysphere is basically the group of people that you actually consider to be human. They are human because they are the ones that you are in contact with. Everyone else outside the sphere you don't register has human, and thus you allow your actions to be what they will, never taking into account what they would mean for others. It truly is a fascinating outlook on society and I recommend at least glancing over it. Hopefully it'll give you something to ponder as you go about your day as usual.

Second Semester Begins

As I stated before, Friday was the first day of the new term. Now I must admit, there are some things that are bothering about all of this. But there are other issues I feel that they did do a good job at. I ended up being put into all of the so called 'harder' classes for English, History, and Math. And it was not what I was expecting. It looks as if there are more crowded than there were last term. And that really defies logic. How can there be more kids in the classes I was placed into when most of them never signed up for such courses? And now, I'm going to have to deal with people who are merely going to get in the way and drag everything down like last term.

Also as if to add insult to injury, it seems that on our transcript we don't get the classes labeled as "Honors". Instead its going to be "Enriched", if anything is there at all. So long as something is written, conveying that these classes are 'more difficult' than the others I'm okay. Though I must say that 'Honors' sounds so much better that 'Enriched'.

Another thing was how the schedule was revamped. Last term the time blocks for all of the classes were at best spasmodic. There was no standard block of time for them. However, this time around, everyone gets a 55 minute cut of the day. The only two drawbacks for this is that lunch now starts 15 minutes later and we sometimes have to revisit a class we already had earlier in the day, but that is a small price to pay so that the classes are long enough to remain engaging. No more short periods that end right when things were getting interesting and overbearing periods so long that the teacher themself is repulsed from being trapped in the same room with us.

Oh boy, this term is going to be something else...