Hello, this is Tressa, live from the inside of my business class. You see, I have completed my work weeks ahead of the wiggers and other assorted drugged-up losers who will be pumping my gas within the next four years. This, my friends, is an example of a government mandated course.
I don't want to be here, listening to dumb preps swap stories about how the 22 year-old they're dating is totally sweet and totally not a statutory rapist. But I am forced to be here to graduate high school. Here in Ontario, when you pick a course, you have a choice between academic, applied, and open. To break it down, academic is for normal/smart kids, and applied is for the morons. Open courses are courses where you have no choice - everyone, regardless of intelligence, is forcefully crammed into the same classroom. There is nothing in this universe worse than being stuck in an open course. While it's fun to grasp the entire curiculum within the first week while 2/3 of your classmates scratch their heads in a vain attempt to comprehend the situation, the people you have to deal with just make you want to institutionalize yourself.
As often as I babble about how great I am, I actually don't have a superiority complex in real life. I don't hate people just because they aren't so bright. But these people aren't just average kids who aren't nerds. They have so little common sense that you can't even reason with them. Throughout my high school career, I have been in 5 open courses: technology, drama, gym, civics/careers, and business technology. I don't have that many bad memories of technology, (Well, not the people...the course was death. But we'll get back to that.) and gym was fine, despite the fact that it was all women and I tend not to get along with women. At all. But sweet mother of mercy, drama, civics/careers, and business technology have made me realize that there is no such thing as survival of the fittest.
My buddy Devin, who is reading this over my shoulder (and throwing paper at the monitor) casually commented, "What was so bad about drama? I mean c'mon, it's drama." Well, Devin, where do I begin? First of all, the teacher was completely out of it. She had no idea what was going on. I would just get up and leave, go upstairs and make faces at my friends in geography, then come back down a half hour later without her even noticing. One time, she made me and my friend Archer write a script, then said "Why are you writing a script? There isn't supposed to be dialogue!" Julia, another reasonable kid stuck in business, was also with me in drama, and helpfully pointed out "Remember that time we asked her what dance drama was, and she told us it was swaying?" But drama was made twice as worse by the kids. With the exception of maybe 4 people, all fit neatly into the categories of extreme prep or extreme sk8r. One time, we watched a movie about Hitler. A girl had never even heard of Hitler, and was discussing how horrible it would be if this was true. When I explained to her what World War II was, she panicked, saying "Oh no! That's awful! When will it end?" Yeah. I wish I had just made that up. But that was drama.
Civics/careers...oh, how I loathe thee. You have to suffer through 1/4 a semester of civics, which is basically "Democracy is great. Woo!" and 1/4 a semester of careers, which is "Job = money." As if I didn't know that already. But you are stuck with the same class for both. My class currently features some dumb moron who shouts out comments every other second, such as "Oh, that's why I didn't get the job!" and "We should stop treating handicapped people like real people." The sad thing is, these people will have the right to vote someday. Devin comments that his class was worse, because his teacher kept leaving so people would cheat on tests and leave condoms everywhere. Well, I can't imagine what that would be like. Careers is just non-stop BSing what your skills are so you can "find yourself." I found myself 16 years ago; I'm quite good. I learn nothing! In fact, that's a common theme of government mandated courses: learning nothing.
Technology was another of those switching courses; you'd switch between wood shop and business technology (i.e. learning to use Microsoft Word, a grueling task). In wood shop, Devin and I (look at all the horrible things we've been through together) hammered and drill pressed our way through a variety of crappy projects. Our teacher was horrible - he was a programming teacher who had probably never been in a garage in his life. He told Devin and I that we couldn't use our hydraulic crane design a day before it was due. But that's okay, we had a chance to recover with our rockin' pop bottle rocket. It launched in a flurry of water, but instead of majestically soaring through the sky, it flew at a 90 degree angle toward some girl sitting on a bench. She screamed and ran away, so no people were harmed in the making of the rocket, despite our best efforts otherwise. Business was actually not bad - our teacher was pretty cool, the work was easy, so I decided to take it next year because I had to take either that, gym, or drama again. There was no way I was taking drama again, and while gym wasn't bad, I prefer zoning out for 73 minutes to frantically running around with creepy athletic girls who could beat me up with their lacrosse sticks or something so fast. So I took business.
IT WAS THE MISTAKE OF MY LIFE.
Yes, here I am, sitting in this class. Everyone is surprisingly quiet right now, instead of swapping drug stories, guessing who's "getting some," or informing others that they cheat on every boyfriend. The work is dead easy, in comparison to the hellstorm of English work we are assigned. However, I don't know if the easy work makes up for it. These people have completely crushed my faith in humanity. They cannot follow in-depth instructions positioned centimetres from their pudgy, makeup-stained faces. One had no idea what the "Save" button did. You try to explain a concept like how to open a file to them, and they look at you like you're lecturing about advanced calculus. Worst of all, if they think you're one of the smart ones, they'll bother you with all their problems constantly, even if the answer is right on the page. The only thing this course has done for me is seriously boost my self-esteem, because I used to worry about doing well in life, but now I realize there are dozens of people far stupider than I am.
Ah, government mandated courses. Subjects I hate but must take to get a "balanced education." There is no way I would be taking this if it didn't result in my diploma. The only good news is that once I finish civics/careers and this course on June 16, I will never have to take another open course ever again. It will be all university and college/university mixed courses from here on out. (I'm not actually going to both a college and a university, that's the difficulty listed). My careers teacher was talking about how she loves open courses because she gets to see a variety of people, but I clearly disagree. I have learned next to nothing from any of these courses, other than the fact that I am great. Man, I hate this new curriculum.
I have to stay focused, and not kill myself or others to get through this horrible, horrible year.