Olympics— It Doesn't Have to be All Canadian

Today when I was flipping through the channels, I saw CTV broadcasting the elimination race of men's omnium, in which every two laps, the slowest person would be eliminated. It was actually very interesting to watch because it was a very close race and each cyclist was constantly trying to pass each other.

However, just as I was enjoying watching the tight race, the one and only Canadian got eliminated. The camera then zoomed over to the faces of the disappointed friends and families, and then there was a sudden commercial break. Yes, a commercial break when the race was going to finish in a few minutes!

No Worksheets, Please!

To be honest, most worksheets  that we get in school are not well designed. They can often be tedious and repetitive, contain stupid questions, and even be impossible to complete.

Repetition/Tediousness 
Many worksheets that I have done are very repetitive: they are repetitive to the point that you would literally have to repeat the same line over and over again! For example, once there was a math worksheet about the four different transformations of the graphs of functions. These transformations shall be named as A, B, C and D in this post for convenience. Anyway, the purpose of the worksheet was for us to understand the differences between A, B, C and D, and guess what it asked us to do? Well, I would list the steps in point form for simplicity:

1.  Investigate A. 
2.  Investigate B
3.  Compare A and B. 
4.  Investigate C
5.  Compare A, B and C
6.  Investigate D
7.  Compare A, B, C and D

Importance of Marks

Speaking practically, marks prior to grade twelve are not important at all. They are almost never looked at when students apply for universities, and they definitely have no relevance at all when students progress even further into their lives and look for jobs or graduate opportunities.

Yet they are still important to many students, including me.

Even with the knowledge that currently all my marks will not affect my future, I still can't help feeling bad when receiving a bad mark. Even worse, it often takes me a long time before I can ward off these feelings. For example, in grade nine after I received a mediocre computer mark, I was so upset that I could not fall sleep at night, and had to go outside and take a walk before I could finally feel better. And today, after I saw my horrible summer school assignment mark, I felt so horrible that I could not concentrate for the rest of the afternoon.

This made me wonder, why do my marks have such an important place in my heart? Why do I care so much about my marks?

After much deliberation, I concluded that it must be because of the fact that marks are an indication of one's ability. Getting a poor mark even after spending a fair amount of effort basically means that your ability isn't great. This would be apparent to your peers and parents, and obviously it wouldn't be a good thing. But I think what's even worse is the fact that you would have to accept the truth about yourself— the fact that there are limits to your ability.

Ugly Thoughts

Yes, I know the title sounds very appealing and it sounds very intense. However, the information is quite personal and the thoughts are pretty ugly, so I don't feel that I should openly post in onto the Internet. Therefore I have encrypted this post.

(In case you want to know what this post is about, it's about me being mad at one of my classmates. That's all I can reveal)

Note: This post has been encrypted.

Answer Key to Opinion-Based Questions

I really couldn't think of an appropriate title for this post, so I'll start this post by apologizing for that.

Anyway, today I was doing a career assignment for which you have to interview your parents and learn about how the society has changed since the time when they were teenagers. You have to describe all these changes , plus answering some questions such as "What did you learn by doing this project, particularly as it relates to the Career Studies course and career planning?"

This really ticks me off. Haven't the people who made this assignment ever thought about the possibility that students might not learn anything from this assignment at all? Yes, I know you are supposed to talk about how it is important to be aware of the changes in society and blah blah blah, but I seriously doubt that anyone who puts this as their answer would actually believe in what they are writing. I mean, this is almost like common sense! Yet if you are honest and actually write something like "I have learned nothing at all," you will probably receive a very low mark. 

School has created an environment in which you must be dishonest to achieve something high. It has created answer-sheets for even opinion-based questions, and if your answer does not match with the one on the answer-sheet, you'll probably lose some marks. Most often, the correct answer on the answer sheet is the cheesiest one and the one that no one believes in, yet it is usually the one that is written down by most students because all these students have already memorized the correct formula for writing opinion-based questions.  

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I hope it made a bit sense to you. It's just another of my angry and rambling posts. 

Related: Doing Things That are Contrary to What I Believe?

Rules

Rules influence people's behaviors in ways that allow our society to function. Without them, there will be no order in the world, and the world is going to turn into a complete chaos.

So why are rules effective in altering or influencing people's behaviors? I think this is quite obvious--people follow rules to avoid the bad consequences. In other words, the negative consequences serve as a disincentive for breaking the rules. For example, the possibility of getting fired precludes workers from not arriving at work on time, and potential imprisonment stop people from stealing items. 

However, what if a rule had no consequences for breaking it? Would it still be effective? I do not think so. For example, if there were no penalties for using hands while playing soccer, all players would naturally want to use their hands as it would be much easier to score that way. In fact, they would have to use their hands as it would be the only way to defeat the other team. This means that rules would equate to nothing if there were no negative consequences for breaking them.
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Finally, I am getting to my point. As something similar to rules, due dates would also only be effective if there were consequences for not meeting them. In school, the most common consequence is getting a few percentages off of the final mark, and to me this is a reasonable and essential penalty because this makes it fair  for people who have handed their work on time and this is the only way to ensure that most students do not hand things in late.

Unfortunately, my career class happens to be a class where the due dates do not seem to be significant. Today we were supposed to be handing in our career wheels, but many people had not even start on theirs and the teacher extended it to tomorrow, with no penalty at all. What upset me was not the fact that they could hand the assignments in tomorrow, but the fact that the teacher did not seem to care at all and seemed to be ready to give out one-month extensions without penalties.

I wanted to ask him, "what's the point of having these due dates?"

Guilt

Guilt is the feeling that you have done something wrong or that you have failed to fulfil an obligation, and it is generally considered as something unpleasant.

However, sometimes guilt is actually good! For example, just then my sister drew a greeting card that we were supposed to make together for a neighbour. Since I was also supposed to take part in the drawing, I felt guilty, and as a result I didn't dare waste any time during the time that she was completing the card. This short twenty minutes was perhaps the most efficient time during today as I typed nearly half of my careers report.

Perhaps guilt provides us an incentive to work hard, or rather, a disincentive not to work hard. Therefore guilt should not always be regarded as something that's painful and bad to have.

Is Success Really Good?

People are often driven by their goals and their dreams. For example, athletes aim for medals in competitions, and students strive for good marks. The thoughts of being successful are usually the fuel that motivates people to work hard—they allow people to have something to look forward to. In short, the idea of success allows people to live and to work on something happily.

What happens when a person meets their goal and becomes successful? At that moment, the person would probably be in ecstasy, shriek in joy, and be glad that all the hard work finally pays off. However, what next? With the goal achieved, the person would not

Expectations

Is it better for people to have higher or lower expectations on us?

This was a question that was raised when I read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. When Charlie was still mentally disabled, no one really scolded him for doing things wrong because they did not expect anything from him. I thought this was sad because this basically meant that no one had any hope that he could do things right.

So in a way when we're reprimanded by others for doing something wrong, we should feel glad because this means that we are still competent enough that people would rely on us to accomplish something. It is when no one even bothers to scold us for our wrong-doings that we should feel miserable.

Obvious? It's subjective.

In English class, we are asked to be "clear" in our writings. This means that we should always explain what we say, and make sure that any reader can easily understand our pieces of writing. This is a reasonable expectation because without clarity, a piece of writing will be harder to understand and therefore less effective. However, how can we define "clear?" Doesn't the word "clear" have a different definition for everyone? Isn't it a subjective thing that all depends on each person's understanding or interpretation of the subject?

Consider these two sentences: