Tag: Hell

Sophomore Year in HS

After a nearly a thousand posts on my blog, I am republishing many of them out of posterity.

Some guy from my class (at LH) ran into my profile in MySpace and all of a sudden i remembered all this crazy stuff that happened that year.

I will just paste it…this should be fun for readers.

Hah! maybe this will help.

I was only at LH for my sophomore year. i spent a majority of my time in Ms Hogue’s art class or getting high and skipping. Because of a bad transcript error from my previous School District, I was forced to retake 4 classes I had already aced the year before, so I blew the school off for the most part and essentially tried to get the hell away from the school.

I lucked out in a few ways, as my deplorable actions in and out of school forced me to take another placement exam, which after the scores were released allowed me to threaten a lawsuit on the RISD and DISD for ruining my attempts at entering college early (and getting ahead on classes).

Now some interesting items…
A: I was in fact a total outcast in my sophomore year.
B: I was totally enamored with Tiffany Featherstone (definitely her name…as we traded hellos after I originally posted this) and never had the balls to tell her and stuck it out with my gf for the year before.
C: The highlight of my time at Lake Highlands was someone freaking out and telling everyone when he found out I did actually have a girlfriend and exactly how far we had gone in the sack on a regular basis.
D: During gym practice that year the cheerleaders decided it was cool to practice in the gymnastics area and totally distracted me, I planted totally wrong after an aerial on the rings and hyper-extended my knee in a very bad way. Since I had only a couple people in the school that i would even speak to willingly I ended up dragging myself to the nurses office instead of getting help. (You know…I was too proud to ask in front of LH’s finest 😉
E: Sometime that year, I got into a tangle with a guy three times my weight and twice my height in the courtyard over a stupid cigarette during lunch.

Anyhow, as far as people I knew…I talked to Hunter and Tiffany on a limited basis during art class, ate lunch with a group of like minded stoners on a regular basis, and generally kept to myself. My history teacher hated my guts because i rarely showed up at her class ( I was on B lunch). I wasn’t allowed in the computer lab after the staff found out I got in trouble with computers the year before on Skyline’s Mainframe. I only remember a few people’s names from that year.

Now, one might think I regret that school year, but if it hadn’t happened, I probably would have gone through the next couple of years learning what it was like to live it up.

Anyhow, nice to know someone else made it out of that school..;)

-Tony
{{{DISCLAIMER}}}
Picturing me as a grown version of the person described above would be a sore mistake. While in high school I totally blew it off because I found out how little it was going to matter once I hit College. I played hard and tried to live life like it was my last day. I was neither clean, nor was I entirely nice at LH. Again, it was a long time ago and I was a whole 13 years old when i started high school. I learned a lot about people that year, and wouldn’t trade it in for anything…err…well…okay…I would have tried hard to ask Tiffany out…but that’s it.




This is just another day in my life…

Picture a small suburbian corner store.

Most of the people living in and around the area may not know each other, but we’ve seen each other before. We say hi or at least nod to each other in passing. It’s a pretty friendly day. I have an incredible addiction to TruMoo that draws me to the corner store almost daily.

As I approach the entrance, another patron approaches the same door and I open it for her. She seems surprised and looks at me like I just did something unheard of. I say, “After you.” I go and grab my Trumoo and as it happens end up in line behind that same woman.

As we’re in line we both seem to be cutting joke with the staff there (this is a regular thing) and the woman seems incredibly familiar, or maybe it’s the other voice yelling inside my head “GET HER NUMBER YOU MORON!” …there’s no doubt – she’s cute, outgoing and I place her at around 30(ish).

Still **something** stops me…it was totally subconscious. No rings, no ring marks, no indications that she’s an axe murderer…so why am I not engaging the conversation?!

She gets through with her purchases and the internal conflict in my subconscious is totally becoming audible to me.

I get through with my purchases just as she reaches the door and I am STILL not pulling the trigger. This simply isn’t me. I may not always make a move or engage someone that is interested, but it’s always a pretty conscious choice…yet still here I am and I can already tell. I’m not going to talk to her.

It turns into slow motion. She’s stopped at her car and is just leaning against it now smiling. I smile at her, she smiles back…

…and I get into my car and start driving away.

Yup. Not only did I not take advantage of the chance…I am getting the distinct impression I just totally choked…and THAT is not how it works in TonyTown. I may be a big dork, but striking up conversation isn’t usually a problem.

…I drive about ten feet forward. What the hell?! Am I turning into THAT guy?! The one that can’t approach someone on a dime? It’s not like I’m Don Juan or anything, but approaching and talking…lol…I’ve been doing that since I was born! She had a great personality and I am obviously interested…why not ask?!

At this point my brain does its thing and I manage to rummage through a gazillion years of memories to find the few that my subconscious had access to that apparently weren’t connecting with me.

That attractive and compelling woman and I had met before…and now I know why I was holding back. She was an ex of one of my oldest friends and undeniably one of the centerpoints of absolute psychotic behavior I and a number of my friends had ever encountered. She was the center of a number of trashed friendships and for a couple of those friends the crux of trashed relationships.

Now it was clear. Man…it’d been 10 maybe 15 years…I honestly don’t know if she’s still the same person. I just remember the windfall of crazy shit that happened to me at her hands.

I stopped the car for a sec and looked back her direction. Yup…there she was.

I move on and remember that my brain is incredibly functional and will sometimes look out for me even when I might be thinking about (or with) something else.

Yep. Just another day. 😉

-Tony




How the Mighty Are Falling-Is our IQ really falling?

Seriously…are we getting dumber? Our kid’s IQ is worse?!

Just thought about something, our IQ’s and education…

The Roman Empire survived well over a thousand years by reinventing themselves as the center of civilization, and in it’s venerable years, the center of control for the Catholic Church, which in its later years was actually for more powerful than the empire itself. I mean we’re talking like 1700 years. that’s 3 times longer than almost every other government in history (that we have real documentation of). They were among the most educated people on the planet for their time. Many many great thinkers were a part of the empire and contributed to it’s success. The idea

Now the U.S., we’re just a little over 200 years in and barely cohesive. UK isn’t much further and isn’t much better off. I see countries that invested heavily in their education system may have lived a little poorer, but are now completely showing us up. What’s worse is I feel like we’re ignoring it. We have these half-assed programs that are supposed to have a huge impact on our educational system when we’re completely ignoring the fact that we haven’t been adequately educating for decades.

What does it take to get people to see the problem here?


The article above is saying that for the first time in our existence, the average IQ of next generation in the US will not be smarter than the previous generation. How the hell does that happen? Is our education system so poor or entrenched that we cant reverse this trend? How is it that people in charge of our education system didn’t see this coming?

TonyTown - Hold No Virtue - IQ - Education in Finland might be getting it rightThis scares me. I mean, what happens in 20 years when it’s our kids in charge? I mean personally I haven’t actually seen examples of this per se, but wow how does this pan out?

By the same token, I’ve been reading about the “Flynn Effect” where our IQ’s are showing an increase, but because the generation gap is statistically affected by relative age this notion is less severe than the media it portraying. The problem in this is that most of the statistics are showing that we are not keeping up with systems in play throughout the rest of the world. However this same idea would also depict our great grandparents as being mentally retarded by today’s standards of intellectualism. So is the beauty of the increase is in the eye of the beholder? Do we have to stay competitive with other nations or continue on our path to creating a huge division in our population intellectually?

On that note, I REALLY love what has been done in Finland. They have made education a positive part of their society rather than a problematic half successful tax on their population. I put some links below if you’re interested in reading them.

/rant over.

LINKS
Great Article on where we are educationally from the ETC blog.
Article about the Flynn Effect and details on this from Smithsonian.com
Why are Finland’s schools so successful?
Heavy Details on why Finland’s education system works so well.
Another article on differences in Finland’s Education System