Tales of Tenth Grade

Negativity is overwhelming our lives. And we need to stop letting it. A person’s pessimistic streak is highlighted when they become a teenager. Everything feels like the end of the world, and we allow minor inconveniences to plague our existence. In my opinion, this causes us to focus obsessively on the negative aspects of our life rather than the positive ones. Our generation is one wrought with defeatist attitudes and nihilistic humor.  We also have a tendency to complain about small things - a lot .  Sometimes it seems like our first reaction to anything is automatically to criticize it rather than attempt to see the good in it. One example I can think of is school assemblies. Instead of just groaning about the waste of class time and utter pointlessness of having an assembly(which are admittedly both good points), we should also try to appreciate the shortened class periods and the break at the end of the school day. When people work to find the smallest issue in s...

This month, the class recommendations for next year came out. As always, I looked through to see what classes I was recommended for. As always, I came across the 21st-century skills requirement. As always, I saw 0/5 credits filled. This is something that always makes me upset. I, along with many other students, tested into the STEM academy at the high school. After much debate, I chose to enter the biomedical program. However, one thing which I never knew about during my decision-making process was that the BioMed route does not count as 21st-century skills, unlike the engineering and computer science route of the STEM program. Now, I'm not saying I don't love the program and my decision to take the BioMed route, I am just confused as to why it doesn't count as 21st-century skills! What's more "21st-century" than finding cures to relevant diseases? Or learning about the new advancements which are being made in medicine? Or, in our senior year class, going to i...

*Disclaimer: Most of the information presented here comes from my personal experience.  Everyone has a different experience in homeschooling and I can’t speak for every homeschooler out there! I was homeschooled in Florida from 1st to 6th grade.  When I moved to Sparta and immediately started public middle school, it was quite a change.  I had to adapt to a different workload, a longer school day, a new environment, and even receiving grades for the first time. Upon revealing that it was my first year in public school to my new Spartan friends, I was met with a lot of the same questions. Most of these questions were based on myths that I've come across time and time again, so I'm here to debunk them once and for all. Most people think that homeschoolers’ parents act as teachers in a school would, being extremely involved in their child's work as well as being their primary source of knowledge. In fact, upon googling the keyword “homeschooling,” almost every im...

        School, noun: any institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline.  When asked what school is, high schoolers aren't likely to reply with the Webster-Merriam definition.  In fact, many of them might respond with "school is prison" or something along those lines.  I, myself, have never encountered this problem but there is a sad truth behind this-many high schoolers see school as something extraneous in the overall process of their education.  In an annual survey taken by Indiana University , fewer than two percent of students responded that they never get bored in school.  That means that ninety-eight percent of students are bored in class.  This brings up a new question-are classes challenging enough or is it just student work ethic?         Another point worth bringing up is the staggering increase in ADHD diagnoses throughout the decades.  As shown by the data collected by th...