Well I have 3 essays that are due tomorrow (technically today) and I'll probably just end up pulling an all nighter and writing them in the next few hours.

I really do not see the point in English class after middle school, unless you still read from the ebonics dictionary and thesaurus. I can't see myself 10 years from now going, "Holy ****, I read The Crucible my junior year in high school and this totally applies here!" I don't know if you guys have had that experience yet but if you have I would like to hear it.

I also think that college is over-rated for some. I do believe it's important to get a good education, but I don't think a degree in college should determine your amount of intelligence. I plan on joining the Army right out of high school, going special forces, and staying in the military my entire life. There's a good possibility I'll be injured though and may have to be discharged. Then I'll probably have to get some dumb *** desk job, in which you need a college degree to get any fairly good salary. I just don't want to take another 4 years out of my life going to school when I could be doing something productive.

I don't mean to sound concieted, but I consider myself a fairly educated man. I'm in NHS and have an all right GPA (3.6 give or take .1), but I don't like to do assignments that are going to be useless to me, now or in the future. I could care less about English, I like history, and calculus and physics are a breeze. If I didn't have to take English, I definatly wouldn't. It's pretty much the class that I struggle in the most because reading and writting essays is pointless. I know how to read just fine, and who the **** cares if I can write a character analysis on a fictional person in a play. I kind of scared myself for a little bit a few weeks ago because I was seriously thinking about dropping out of high school. I'm not dumb enough to do so, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep my grades up the rest of the year and all next year. I took so many classes my freshman and sophmore year that I would have enough credits to graduate if I took English 4 this summer. I'm still thinking about it. It would suck not to have a senior year, but I'm going to have to find a bunch of BS classes to fill my schedule with because English 4 is the only class I still need and you have to be taking atleast 5 classes at any given time.

Basically I wanted to blow off some steam. I'm sure 75% of you didn't read all that, and if you did, you spend entirely too much time reading about other peoples problems and should probably start thinking about your own.

 

Need some motivation? Here ya go....

I have a degree from a top University as well as a Masters. Most people never learn to write well or know how to make an effective argument. If you do, you will always be at an advantage. Before I got promotted this summer, I had a subordinate who worked hard but I could not promote him because of his writing ability. He also the same guy who used to say things like "I don't think a college degree means much etc.." but, in his current position he is really frustrated because he knows that he is really struggling.

He makes $40k when most of my guys were earning over $70k and even higher. Why? He can't write a proper proposal. What takes me 10 minutes, takes him days. Most cases, I had to do it it for him which took valuable time away from other things I could be doing.

Take this stuff seriously and with pride. It will pay off.

 

highschool essays are a walk in the park. wait till you goto college, if thats your plan. its a whole new world... lol

 

I said college is over-rated for some. By that I meant you may or may-not actually need the degree to be successful in the job you are in. If he is in a job that he must write a proposal to get a promotion, it would probably be a good idea for him to get a degree or find a way to build his writing abilities.

I just don't see myself using any of those things in my life. I don't want any kind of corporate position, no matter how much it pays. I like to do physical type work because it keeps my busy and makes the day go by. There is no way in hell I could sit at a desk all day and do paper work or **** on the computer. My career choices are the military, fire-fighter, or if all else fails, stay where I'm employed now and work my way up to head chef which pays about 60k a year.

 

My point exactly. I don't see why they need to be things of that sort. I could write a ****in' 12 page essay on something that was of use to me. Have me write an essay on the art of war. Strategy, reason, failure in diplomacy. I could write a ****in' book on the art of war. A regular Sun Tzu. Have me write an essay on some fictional book that has no real value to me what-so-ever and you get one solid paragraph that is restated in a different form how ever many times is necessary to achieve the length that is required.

 

Sure man, college is not for everyone, but why limit yourself?

Oh, I work a corporate job, but rarely sit at a desk. The guy I was telling you about....he does not even have a desk. In fact, we spend most of our days crawling around manufacturing plants as consultants solving problems and selling our products as well as ourselves.

This guy I told you about worked for a family auto-body business for the last 10 years. But, he could not properly support his family with that job and got bored working on cars. Now he regrets not taking school more seriously. He could be earning a lot more is he had some more skills.

As far as me, I travel the world. Been to LA, TX, NM, NH, MA, Porto Rico, etc..just since Sept. Going to Australia, Germany, and Hawaii, Mexico, and San Diego between now and March. See, NO DESK - LOL. In today's day and age, people spend less time sitting at a desk especially with the use of computers.

I too was in the military. I spent a LOT of time writing evaluations and requests for promotions. Guys who can't write, can't get their guys promoted. Guys who can will have a much better chance of being able to take care of their people.

The key for you is to find a way to relate what you are writing and reading to something that interests yourself. As you advance in school, you will have more involvement in deciding what you read and write which makes it more enjoyable.

My daughter is in 4th grade and is just nine years old. She reads an average of two novels a week and reads at a HS level. She writes at a jr high level. She is just plain gifted, but we still push her to get better and make sure she is working to her full potential.

 

I was similar to your daughter in elementary school, just with math instead. We had a computer program called CCC which was just a bunch of math exercises. In the 3rd grade I had been the only kid in my school to beat the program. It's maximum difficulty was 9th grade level math (Algebra II at the time I believe). The reason I like math is because we use it almost everyday, if not everyday, and numbers just click with me. I'm not lazy but I don't like to waste my time doing work that doesn't need to be done. I would get 0's on h/w assignments, quizzes, and tests in middle school because I wouldn't show my work on problems because I could do them in my head easily and didn't want to spend an hour on homework that could take me 10 minutes tops. I really wouldn't mind going to OSU and getting a bachelors in a field of physics, but I just realy can not stand English to the point that I'll avoid college because of that one class. I had when I get my grade card and I have straight A's except for English which is usually a C (it'll be a D this grading period). I have the skill to write a lengthy, proper resume and documents of that nature, and I wouldn't mind doing things like that in class because I could see how that relates to the real world. I just don't see how writing a 3 pages character analysis is really going to help me succeed in my future career.

 

1 down, 2 to go. School starts in 3 and a half hours...

 

Its true, College isn't for some people.

But take this in in mind, many jobs (around here atleast) that will pay you decent money are labor jobs. My dad is making about $70k a year as an electrician. But his body is deteorating basically. The manual labor he has been doing for 10+ years is now wearing him down extremely quickly, and hes only 42.

And now to make that much money as a laborer it requires you to go through an apprenticeship, to get a state certification, to get a journey mens ticket. He spent 5 years in an apprenticeship, which is the equivalent to having a BA in electricity.

Yes, he makes good money, but it is extremely hard work, and he had to go through more schooling after highschool, still.

Whereas the guy with a nice degree isn't breaking his back and is pulling $90k a year.

As for the military..I have a cousin who is special forces. Hes an army ranger. Hes been military for 12 years. When in as enlisted, and was infantry. He ended up going to UC Davis, got a degree, and then went to Officer-Candidate school. Became an Officer, and then went to jump school, some other school, and then through ranger training.

They stuck him in Baghdad with a small sniper batallion, where he was doing door to door raids. He served 2 tours in Baghdad, Iraq.

His Gym was blown up, his buddies were blown up, the hummer that was infront of him, was blown up, and he can't tell anyone how many peoples hes killed, or anything like that, but the only thing he will say is "A mossberg 12 guage is the best for door to door raids."

He went in for his 3rd tour and 3 weeks into it, something went wrong with his eye, and he had to be evacuated and flown back to D.C. for emergency eye surgery. Hes now somewhat blind in his eye, on reserve duty, for the time being, and is looking at going to Afghanistan next.

As much training as he has, he still says the pay isn't enough. He loves the job, however.

Now, I'm about 18, a highschool grad, and I'm not in College. I got somewhat discouraged about it, mainly because I went from having major universities wanting to sign me up for full ride scholarships, to my only choice being Jr. College.

I had offers to places like, Hawaii, Ohio, Nebraska, Indiana...for either baseball or wrestling. I messed up my spine in wrestling, and I was battling a problem with my pitching arm.. I could throw about 2 innings and my arm would swell up and my fingers would go numb..

Now that I realise what potential is out there for someone with a degree, I am heading towards doing some classes, and working as well.

You should really look at some college, even if you want to go military. So that if something goes wrong for you there, you have a degree to fall back on.

 

I just flew through essay number 2. One more to go!

I'm not so worried about the pay. I know it's not great, but the benefits are ****in' nice. Pretty much everything is paid for, and on top of your basic pay you get all different kinds of pay for being away from home and whatever your specific job is when you're in Iraq. Plus when you're in Iraq you aren't paying for food, clothes, housing or anything for that matter. You salary is tax free so it's 100% profit really. I'm not afraid of going to Iraq, infact I'm slightly looking forward to it. I don't like this war at all, but I can't tell them I won't go over there, so I might as well go with the flow. I just want to do something that will have my adrenaline pumping everyday and will be a little different everyday. The military is the only thing I can think of that'll give me that.

 

Still on my last one. Also on my last Rockstar! I'll have to run to the drive-thru here in a bit a get 2 for at school or I'll be sleepin' through all my classes.

 

Guys like you are what make the military tick. Some people just love the environment.

 

Well if you join the military seeking an infantry career, don't join the army, if you do you'll realize you've made a mistake once you have no idea what you're doing when getting shot at..the army's basic training has completely dwindled down to something that would suit a 10 year old's potential.

 

PCola: before you go and bash military training..you got exp to back that? =)

And who knows Slick, maybe thats what you're cut out for. People DO love the military. I mean, its a different thing every day .. and a great adventure. I give you props for having the ***** to man up and do it.

That was what I origionally wanted to do..until my dad reminded me about my artificial knee cap, and that even if they would still take me, he would break my legs before I left for basic..

And no, hes no anti-war or anti-military.. he served his time.. had a little Gulf War action ect. He just won't allow me to go..

 

school is for fools!

 

I have 4 friends in the Army, 2 in the Marines, 1 of whom left for Iraq in June 06, a cousin that's in the Airforce, and a friend that's training in the Navy to be a rescue diver..wanna dance?

I'm not bashing the military, I probably know more about/ have the most respect for the military than anyone in my school, I'm not even in the JROTC program and still make the kids in it look like fools when I know more about it than they do.. I'm just saying that the Army made some drastic changes to their training programs right about the time when the new ACU was being released, most soldiers who had training prior to that period (and actually care) see it as a joke. Basically, the Army lowered their standards too much. And you have to make sure that you saw the word Army in my post, I'm not saying anything about the USMC boot, that's a great training program, and IMO should be standard for any branch...USN and USAF, I don't know much about their training, except that some USN train /w USMC..think about it, would you want to go into combat knowing that the training you had surely wasn't enough to prepare you for what you're about to do? I wouldn't.. ;x

 

i have a friend that went thru the army and hated it and then trained for the marines...he loves the marines..besides, the marines uniforms are so much better.thats y people go to the marines haha...jk..

 

Basic training is exactly what it says, basic. You don't learn everything you need to know about infantry in basic training. You do basic, then go on to do your specific job training. I also never said I was going in for infantry, I said SF. The GB's are one of the most advanced SF units in the world, ofcourse along with navy SEALs, marine force RECON, and the airforce's SF unit. I don't prefer one branch over any other, but just coming from all the info that I've recieved from various friends and family members in all the different branches, the army seems to be the one for me.