School Sucks. Also, Nerdfighting.

Alright, I was kind of MIA last week because I had a big project due and I'm a horrible procrastinator. So to make up for that (and for the fact that my nerdfighter story is super lame), the first half of this will be about the education system.

Now, I think the number one thing you have to understand about the American Public School System is there is not uniformity to it. It is literally different every place you go. I'll save you the history lesson, but the US tends to favor state and local legislation. For the most part, federal government plays a very very small role in public schools. They're ruled by the state is a very broad sense. Local government plays a very large role in the public school system here.

For example, Matt and Caroline both talked about pre-school. We don't have preschool where I live. I never went to preschool, and the only thing close to it that exists in my district is our Early Childhood Learning Center. Which is basically just for children from immigrant families that don't know English. So you go there, learn English, and (hopefully) aren't utterly confused when you're at an actual elementary.

Another example, uniforms. I didn't have uniforms until Grade 4 when it was put to a district-wide vote weather or not to have uniforms in every level of schools. Elementary and middle school, yes! High schools, no. So in my district we wear uniforms until Grade 9. Fun fact: Some local districts consider Grade 9 to be middle school.

Our mandatory schooling starts with Kindergarden (K). When I was in K we only had half days. So you were either there in the morning, or there in the afternoon, but not both. It has since changed and now children are required to spend all day at school (an example of local-level govt). And so it goes on in much the same manner as my fellow Americans have explained. Until Grade 3.

Grade 3 is when we start our state standardize test. Every. Single. State. Has as different test. Stupid, right? Yeah. And on top of that, they're constantly changing. At least here they are. When I first started testing, I took a test that was abbreviation to TAAS. The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Then in 2003, it was changed to TAKS. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. After I graduated, the changed it again. Students now take the STAAR. The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. There's lots of assessing in Texas. Now basically what these tests are trying to do is to make sure everyone is on the same level. But here's the thing. What happens if you don't pass? Nothing! Nothing happens if you don't pass the test. You get shoved into the next grade with an extra 'prep class'. So as Matt mentioned, sometimes these tests do nothing except see who gets funding.

And about funding. You'd think schools would get rewarded for having students pass and have a good understanding of their courses, right? Nah, you get federal and state grants in several ways. If you have very smart students who are in 'advanced' classes (and therefore need more help) or if you have very poor performing students (and therefore need more help), or if you're in a school district where the majority of residents have low income (and therefore need more help). But most schools don't get rewarded for having consistently above average students. This is why schools in my district can build new state-of-the-art, eco-friendly schools with windmills and solar panels, give laptops to every single high school student, give an iPad to every single middle school student, and give elementary school children tablets for their classrooms. Other schools, ones with average performing students, in districts where the mean income is above average have to rely on donates to the schools. Which works for them, a lot of the times.

Now college. As previously mentioned, it's ridiculously expensive. Private universities cost almost twice as much as public ones. My DREAM school, the one that I hope to get my masters from, is Southern Methodist University. I would have loved to have gone here straight out of the gate. Unfortunately it's $37,050 for tuition. Plus $4,700 in fees. Plus $13,725 for room and board. Which brings SMU's total cost of attendance to a whopping $55, 475 per year. Now I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have $200,000 dollars to spend right out of high school. That's more than my house. That's more than twice my house and my car. And that's not even the most expensive in the US.  Bigger state schools can afford to charge higher tuition. For example, the University of Texas is a very popular school. They've got good programs, they're in a really awesome college town know for being...you know, awesome. They've got an amazing football team, basketball, baseball. They have it all basically. Everyone and their mom wants to go to UT. So they can afford to charge around $30,000 a year (sorry for not looking up the exact figures, SMU killed me) because they're popular and people want to go there. SMU is also on the popular list. School like these offer little in the way of financial aid because they don't really have to. People will pay just to say they got a BBA from SMU, or an Engineering degree from UT. Fun fact: The University of Texas at Austin is so popular that it receives $7.2 billion dollars out of the $16.11 billion available to public Texas universities.

And I'll leave it at that. That's my two cents and it's all I really wanted to say about the American School System. Everything else has been explained to you. My experiences where the same, for the most part, as Caroline and Matt's.

Now that I've made myself very depressed with the realization of how much in debt I'll be in when I leave college let me tell you more about how I waste precious time on the internet.

I started watching the vlogbrothers maybe...a year an a half ago? (I honestly don't know, these are all rough estimates. I'm not the math major.) Before that, two years ago, was when I really started watching youtube videos. And I was watching some other youtuber and they linked to a vlogbrothers video. I checked it out, looked at some other videos, quickly realized that these guys are AMAZING, and haven't looked back since. I wasn't never involved with the nerdfigher community until literally two days before this blog started. I started watching vlogbrothers from the first episode back in the summer and I was finally getting to videos I had already seen so I thought it was high time I got involved. Now that I knew my shit, and whatnot. So here I am. Ta-da!

Told you my nerdfigher story was lame. Glad I blabbered on about school for so long! XD